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MEMORIAL, ADDRESSES 



LIFE AND CHARACTER 



OLIYEE P. MOETON, 

(A SENATOR FROM INDIANA,) 

BEIilVBREI) IN THE 

SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 
January 17 and 18, 1878, 



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PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF CONGRESS. ^^ 



^ _ ^ Forty-fifth Congress, Second Sessio^ 



WASHINGTON: ' 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
1878. 




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\J OPS "X 



ADDEESSES 



DEATH OF OLIVER P. MORTON, 



A SENATOR FROM INDIANA. 



DELIVERED IN THE SENATE. 

Thursday, January 17, 1878. 



Mr. McDonald. Mr. President: 1 send to the Secretary's 
desk resolutions to be read for information, and to be acted upon by 
the Senate in their proper order. 

The VICE-PRESIDENT. The resolutions will be read. 

The Chief Clerk read as follows : 

Resolved, That from an earnest desire to show every mark of respect to the mem- 
ory of Hon. Oliver P. Morton, late a Senator of the United States from the State 
of Indiana, and to manifest the high estimate entertained of his eminent public 
services, his distinguished patriotism, and his usefulness as a citizen, the business of 
the Senate be now suspended that the friends and associates of the deceased Senator 
may pay fitting tribute to his public and private virtues. 

Mr. McDonald. Mr. President, I ask that that resolution 
be now adopted. 

The resolution was considered, and agreed to unanimously. 

The VICE-PRESIDENT. The remaining resolutions will 
be read. 

The Chief Clerk read as follows: 

Resolved, That a wide-spread and public sorrow on the announcement of his 
death attested the profound sense of the loss which the whole country has sustained. 

Resolved, That as a mark of respect for the memory of Mr. Morton, the mem- 
bers of the Senate will go into mourning by wearing crape upon the left arm for 
thirty days. 

Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate communicate these resolutions to the 
House of Representatives. 

Resolved, That as an additional mark of respect for the memory of the deceased 
Senator, the Senate do now adjourn. 



Address of Mr. MCDONALD, of Indiana. 

Mr. President : On the 1st day of November, 1877, in the after- 
noon, at five o'clock and twenty-eight minutes, my late colleague, 
Oliver P. Morton, departed this life. 

The Senate, at the time, took note of his death and manifested 
its respect for him by the appointment of a committee to be present 
at his burial. 

The resolutions which I submit to day for the consideration of 
the Senate are designed to be placed upon the journals of Congress, 
there to remain for all time a record-monument to his memory. 

In moving these resolutions I do not expect to become his eulo- 
gist. I feel that I am not suited to the task. 

We can all say that by his death a "great name has been stricken 
from the roll of the Senate." Few, if any, filled so large a space 
in the public mind during the eventful period in our history in 
which he lived. But the mellowing influence of time will have to 
cast its mantle over these events and the prominent part he took in 
them before a political opponent, and especially a citizen of his own 
State, can so far free his mind from the influences engendered by the 
political strifes as to be just, much less to be able to indulge in the 
pardonable license which sanctions the exaggeration of virtues and 
high quality and hides, as if with a veil, all defects. 

Less than one year ago, when the Senate had under consideration 
the resolutions of the House of Representatives of respect to the 
memory of its late Speaker, Michael C. Kerr, Senator Morton was 
borne from the Supreme Court room, where he was engaged as a 
member of the electoral commission, to this Chamber to take part 
in the proceedings. On that occasion, speaking of Mr. Kerr, he said : 

We live in a State somewhat distinguished of late years for the bitterness of its 
political contests. While he and I were on different sides, yet our personal relations 
were always good, and I now take pleasure in bearing testimony to his memory. 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 



These words and this sentiment I can and do fully apply to him. 

Oliver P. Morton was a native of the State of Indiana, and 
was born in the county of Wayne on the 4th day of August, 1823. 
A brief period in the common schools of his native State, four years' 
apprenticeship at the hatter's trade, and two short years at Oxford 
College, in the State of Ohio, made up the sum of his preparation 
to enter upon the business of life. Having chosen the profession 
of law, he devoted himself to its study and came to the bar in 1847. 
Had he continued in the practice of his profession, it is not to be 
doubted that, with the energy and ability he has displayed in other 
fields, he would have become a leading member in it. Wliile he 
was more or less connected with the political controversies of the 
times, it was not until 1856 that he may be said to have entered 
actively into political life, when he became the candidate of what 
was known as the people's party for governor of the State. 

Before that time, and up to 1854, he had been identified polit- 
ically with the democratic party; but upon the passage of the Kan- 
sas-Nebraska act, by which the Missouri compromise line was 
repealed, he detached himself from that party and joined in the 
movement which resulted in the establishment first of the people's 
and afterwards of the republican party. But it was not until 1861 
that he became generally known to the country. In October, 1860, 
he was elected lieutenant-governor of his State on the ticket with 
Governor Henry S. Lane, and upon the election of Governor Lane 
to the Senate, in January following, he became acting governor, 
and continued to be the chief magistrate of his native State until 
January, 1867, when he was elected a Senator from the State to 
succeed Senator Lane in this body. His course and conduct as gov- 
ernor of Indiana during the civil war are so well known to the 
country and have been so much the subject of comment as to malco 



10 ADDEESS OF MR. MCDONALD ON THE 



it unnecessary for me to do more than refer to them. The energy 
with which he supported and upheld the power of the Federal Gov- 
ernment in its efforts to suppress the rebellion won for him the name 
and title of the " war governor," and gave him a permanent place 
in the front rank of the public men of the country. 

Naturally combative and aggressive, intensely in earnest in his 
undertakings, and intolerant in regard to those who differed with 
him, it is not strange that while he held together his friends and fol- 
lowers with hooks of steel, he caused many whose patriotism and 
love of country were as sincere and unquestioned as his own to place 
themselves in political hostility to him. And the political situation 
in Indiana was well expressed by him when he said, on the occasion 
I have already referred to : 

We live in a State somewhat distinguished of late years for the bitterness of its 
political contests. 

During the early part of Governor Morton's political career he 
was as distinguished for his physical strength as for his mental 
ability and energy; but in the fall of 1865, almost without warn- 
ing, he was stricken down by partial paralysis, from the disabilities 
of which he never recovered and which gradually but surely carried 
him to his grave. When he entered this Chamber to take his seat 
as a Senator he was enabled to do so only by the aid and assistance 
of others, and although unschooled in parliamentary law and without 
experience in the methods and proceedings of deliberative bodies, 
laboring under disabilities that would have induced most men 
to seek for quiet in retirement, almost from the first day he entered 
this Chamber he became the political leader of his party and main- 
tained that position to the last; not that there were not other mem- 
bers of it who were his equals in intellect and his superiors in learn- 
ing, yet there were none who possessed his untiring energy, his 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 11 

sleepless industry, and his indomitable will. His loss of physical 
vigor seemed to have added concentrated power to his mental facul- 
ties and to have given increased activity to his mental energies, so that 
it appeared as if the mind was ax3ting for both mind and body ; and 
it is most probably true that this increase of mental activity and 
constant occupation rather added to his life by drawing the mind 
away from dwelling upon the helpless condition of his body and 
the incurable malady that had seized upon it. 

I shall not undertake to follow Oliver P. Morton through 
his senatorial career. He became a member of this body after the 
rebellion had been suppressed and armed resistance to the Govern- 
ment put down, but before the method of dealing with the people 
of the Southern States or the policies that should govern in the 
re-establishment of the Federal authority over the States lately in 
rebellion had been decided upon or adopted. The two modes of 
what was termed a " restoration " of the Union on the one hand, 
or a " reconstruction " of it on the other, were then being actively 
canvassed in the national councils and before the country. 

Although in the inception of these questions it was understood 
that Governor Morton favored what was known as the restoration 
policy, yet upon becoming a member of this body, for reasons no 
doubt satisfactory to himself, he became the chamjjion of the recon- 
struction policy, and continued to be the advocate of that policy, 
and the logical results of it, during the remainder of his life. He 
also took a leading part in all the discussions and debates that arose 
in this body from time to time as is fully shown by the records of 
its proceedings. But his labors during the last session of the last 
Congress furnished the most striking illustration of his sleepless 
energy. As chairman of the Committee on Privileges and Elections 
it became his duty to direct and control the investigation ordered 



12 ADDRESS OF MR. MCDONALD ON THE 

by the Senate into the elections in several of the Southern States and 
respecting the Oregon electoral vote. His determined opposition to 
the electoral bill and his efforts to defeat it are well remembered by 
all who were members of this body at that time. 

His labors upon the electoral commission during the eventful 
period when it seemed as if the very foundations of our Government 
were in danger of being uprooted are vividly remembered by all. 
Physically disabled, yet he was everywhere present; borne to his 
committee-room, carried to this Chamber, lifted to his seat in the 
electoral commission by the strong arms of others, there remaining 
into the long, dreary hours of the night, tireless among the tired, 
pressing on where strong men gave way, he presents a picture that 
may well excite our wonder and challenge our admiration, and for 
which history furnishes no example. I may, however, be allowed 
to say that in all these things the part he played was intensely par- 
tisan. To him it may have appeared true statesmanship. In the 
great contest then going on it may have seemed to him that the suc- 
cess of his party was essential to the welfare of his country. By 
liis own declaration, he opposed the electoral bill because he " did 
not want to give up a certainty for an uncertainty." His action in 
the committee and, as far as we are able to judge, on the electoral 
commission, was aimed especially to maintain that vantage-ground ; 
and when success was finally attained it may be said that it rounded 
up and closed his political career. 

The subsequent events of his life were unimportant and will 
attract but little attention when the history of these times shall have 
been written. 

That Oliver P. Morton was a great man is conceded by all. 
In regard to his qualities as a statesman, men do differ now and 
always will. But that he was a great partisan leader — the greatest 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 13 

of his day and generation — will hardly be questioned; and his place 
in that particular field will not, perhaps, be soon supplied. No- 
where will his loss be so severely felt as among his friends and fol- 
lowers in his own native State. 

Viewing him simply as a partisan, even his opponents concede 
that he possessed many high and generous qualities. If he struck 
hard blows, he did not shrink from receiving hard blows in return ; 
and when the strife was over he was ever ready to extend a hand 
and to sink, if not forget, the past. And while he never gave up 
a partisan advantage, he was ever ready to perform a personal act 
of kindness and friendship to a political adversary as well as to a 
political friend; and the undying love and affection of those who 
stood nearest and dearest to him in the relations of life attest the 
warmth and strength of his own affections. 

And now, Mr. President, that he has gone to his grave, where we 
all are soon to follow him, if he had faults let them be buried with 
him. Let us remember and cherish only those kindly feelings and 
sentiments which his higher and better qualities inspired. 



Address of Mr. Edmunds, of Vermont. 

Mr. President : The tribute I offer to the memory of the late 
Senator from Indiana flows from a personal intercourse of good 
will and general sympathy covering the period of his whole career 
in the Senate, from 1867 to the time of his death, and also from 
the high estimate I have formed of his extraordinary ability and 
the purity and breadth of the purposes of his political life. 

However much he differed with his political opponents, and not 
infrequently with some of his political associates, the warmest con- 
troversy rarely, if ever, interfered with the kindliness of his per- 



14 ADDRESS OP MR. EDMUNDS ON THE 

sonal relations with his fellow Senators. His was one of the natures, 
not too common in the world, that could without animosity receive 
as well as give hard blows in debate, that with men differently con- 
stituted would long rankle in personal bitterness and dislike. But 
in the time allotted to the occasion I must speak of his relations 
to public affairs rather than of those felicities of character that made 
his intercourse with his fellow-men in the communications of private 
life a pleasure to all who knew him. 

The qualities that command the largest measure of material suc- 
cess in affairs are a clearness of understanding that brings into view 
from the beginning the definite end and the most available processes 
by which it is to be reached, together with that force of will which 
is tireless in its persistence and that quickness of decision wliich 
utilizes instantly the commanding points in every crisis, that never 
leaves an enterprise waiting upon doubts until the tide that might 
have borne it on to fortune has receded and left the nascent victory 
a helpless wreck. Men with such qualities become the founders or 
saviors of States and systems and policies ; and they are the leaders 
of men, not from the intrigues of craft and cunning or the power 
of wealth or rank or the traditions of a family, but from an innate 
and rightful sovereignty in human nature. 

These qualities are not those essentially necessary to oratory, and 
they frequently exist without it. Conspicuous examples of these 
differences exist in the history of every people. The finest flights 
of Cicero or of Burke had little effect upon the condition of the 
Roman or English nation compared with the plain speech and 
prompt action of a Caesar or a Cromwell. 

Although not wanting in many things which are usually consid- 
ered to be parts of oratorical power, Mr. Morton's greater power 
consisted in the large possession of the characteristics I have named 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 15 









as belonging to natural leaders of men, and in his plain but persua- 
sive modes of impressing his views upon others and the fitness of 
their following him to their realization. 

As a lawyer it perhaps cannot be said that he possessed that sub- 
tlety in dialectics and that copiousness of technical learning that 
would have made him pre-eminent at the bar in the disposition of 
cases arising in the affairs of a conventional state of society and a 
complicated system of jurisprudence. But, as has been said of the 
famous French lawyer and statesman, Odillon Barrot, his real 
strength lay in matters "which he could lift into public events of 
paramount importance by referring them to the broad principles on 
which all systems of social order or policy are based." In discus- 
sions of this character he had few equals. The graphic clearness of 
his statements, the simple directness of his logic, and the sense of 
his sincere earnestness that he impressed upon his hearers, placed 
him fairly among the most powerful and successful of speakers. 

Like many men of such great and extraordinary gifts and quali- 
ties, with usually a most sincere belief in the value of the ends he 
had in view on particular occasions and an intense desire to attain 
them, he was not always careful as to the consistency of the methods 
of reaching them or of the harmony of those methods with his 
previous opinions. The object appearing to him to be a high one, 
as of justice or equal rights, he did not always pause in his pursuit 
of it to consider whether the path he trod in reaching it was the 
same with or differing from that he had thought the only fit one on 
some former occasion. But such inconsistencies were in their nature 
far from the shiftmg selfishness of the demagogue or the vacillations 
of weakness; they arose rather out of the very intensity of his belief 
in the virtue and importance of the thing to be am)mplished, which 
to him made the most available reasons and processes of action the 



16 ADDRESS OF MR. EDMUNDS ON THE 

true ones, however much opposed in the abstract they may have 
been to opinions he had before expressed. Such pecuHarities as 
these, while in many men they would be vices, were with him almost 
virtues; for they were never shown for selfish or personal aims, but 
always on occasions when it appeared to him that the safety of the 
Republic was at stake or the liberties and rights of citizens were in 
peril. 

Perhaps the most remarkable period in his career was while he 
was governor of Indiana, during the darkest days of the rebellion. 
This is not the proper occasion to describe in detail the almost insur- 
mountable dangers and difficulties with which he was surrounded ; 
dangers and difficulties before which the hearts of many would have 
sunk and the effi^rts of many would have failed. But his brave 
soul seemed to grow stronger as perils increased, and his quickness 
of perception and fertility in expedients generally frustrated the 
plans of the enemies of the Republic, and stimulated to greater ac- 
tivity its weak supporters and its lukewarm friends. 

From the arduous and multifarious duties of his executive life 
we follow him to this body, in which he took his seat on the 4th 
of March, 1867. 

Here he found pending problems in legislation, and concerning 
the future frame-work and nature of the Government, as difficult 
and embarrassing as any perhaps that have ever been experienced 
by a civilized people. Their nature and scope are familiar to us all. 

To their solution Mr. Morton brought a fervent love of that 
real liberty and equality of rights among men that can exist only 
under the security of provisions of fundamental law, and can only 
be practically defended and promoted by the enactment of statutes, 
and their fearless and vigilant enforcement by the judiciary and 
executive power. His voice was always raised in favor of measures 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 17 

looking to these ends. To his zeal and vigor in debate the country 
is much indebted for two of the constitutional amendments and the 
statutes to enforce them that have been made since the close of the 
war of the rebellion. Whatever of failure may have occurred 
in realizing all that true liberty under the law implies cannot be 
attributed to any want of interest or active eflPort on his part. He 
firmly believed that there had been a great and beneficent change, 
a lawful revolution in the form of the Government in the direction 
of equal rights, as the fair fruit of a revolution that had been 
attempted in the interest of slavery and secession ; and, to quote 
the words of the French statesman to whom I have compared him, 
he believed that it would be a misfortune more real than the woes 
attending the rebellion itself for those who had failed "to think that 
there had been no revolution, for, for this very reason, there may 
be two instead of one. And in truth, if a revolution without 
cause is fatally condemned to miscarry, the miscarriage is not less 
infallible for a revolution without effect." 

He was a man of strong passions and great talents, and was, as 
a consequence, a devoted partisan. He had no faith in that phi- 
losophy of government imputed to Louis Napoleon when President 
of France, which led him to suppose that he could dominate all 
parties by taking ministers who represented none. He did not 
believe that the present security or the permanent peace of the 
country could be obtained without inscribing the results of the 
war in the sacred pages of the Constitution itself, and in enacting 
and enforcing measures of legislation that, if observed, should 
make liberty and equal rights as great a beneficence as without such 
protection they would be to the poor and downcast a mockery and 
a snare. So believing and so acting, he was consistently conspic- 
uous in his devotion to the ends he had in view. In the fields in 



18 ADDRESS OP MR. THURMAN ON THE 

which his patriotism was exerted it may be said of him, as it was 
of the Knights of Saint John in the holy wars : 

In the forefront of every battle was seen his burnished mail, and in the gloomy 
rear of every retreat was heard his voice of constancy and of courage. 

Now when his labors are closed and he has departed from among 
us, this high body rightly sets apart a day of solemn memorial to 
his memory that, more lasting than monuments of bronze or of 
marble, will remain as long as the records of history endure. 



Address of Mr. Thurman, of Ohio. 

Mr. President, I have always entertained the opinion that an 
occasion like this — when the whole Senate, differing widely in 
political opinions, as its members ever have done and ever will do, 
unite in paying tribute to the memory of a deceased brother — is 
not a proper occasion for unmeasured praise on the one hand or 
criticism on the other of his political life. Oliver P. Morton 
was too prominent a man in American politics, for nearly a quarter 
of a century, to be forgotten; and his friends and his adversaries 
may safely trust to the sober influences of time for a correct esti- 
mate of his political character. 

In the brief remarks that I shall submit to-day I shall speak 
of the man, not of the politician. It is true that it is difficult to 
separate the man from the politician in speaking of Oliver P. 
Morton, for he lived and moved and had his being in the atmos- 
phere of politics, and in that atmosphere and by its influence his 
personal traits of character were most strikingly developed and 
sharply defined. In any sphere of life he would have been a 
remarkable man, for his ability, his energy, his determination, and 
his industry were all remarkable. But practical politics was his 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 19 

true sphere, for in no other occupation could he have displayed in 
so signal a manner that quickness of apprehension, force of logic, 
singular audacity, inflexibility of purpose, and controlling power 
over the opinions and actions of others, by which he was so emi- 
nently distinguished and which so well qualified him to be a leader 
among men. 

Suffering for years from a painful and hopeless disease that ulti- 
mately terminated his life, we yet saw him, year after year, perform 
an amount of labor from which the most robust man might have 
recoiled as from a task too heavy to be borne. He evaded no duty 
however onerous ; he asserted his claim to leadership at all times 
and under all circumstances however great might be the sacrifice 
of comfort, repose, or health. He was not a scholar in the broad 
sense of the term, and he did not pretend to be. His speeches 
were distinguished by logical force and earnestness, and not by 
beauty of expression, figures of rhetoric, or classical allusions. He 
always spoke for a purpose and not for show, for he was very free 
from vanity. But while his general scholarship was not great 
there were some subjects that he had studied with much care, and 
he was very remarkable for the quickness with which he gathered 
and mastered the facts of any subject debated in the Senate. He 
was averse to personalities in even the most heated party debates, 
and in social intercourse he was uniformly courteous and amiable. 
It is gratifying to me to remember that often as we were engaged in 
discussion, and sometimes very exciting discussion, no unkind word 
ever passed between us, and our personal relations were always kind 
and friendly. 



20 ADDRESS OP ME. CONKLING ON THE 



Address of Mr. CONKLING, of New York. 

Mr. President, in ancient times those nearest the dead spoke 
in their funerals. Fathers celebrated the bravery and achievements 
of their sons, and the graces and virtues of wives and of daughters 
were publicly recited and extolled by those who loved and mourned 
them most. 

These customs have been banished by modern civilization or modern 
manners. Now, the fondest lips are sealed, and the ashes and the fame 
of the departed are no longer committed to those who would shield 
and treasure them with the tender partiality of bereaved affection. 

It is difficult to note a change so great, in a matter so deep-rooted 
in the heart of man — so hallowed and mastered by instinct and 
innate emotion, without wonder that the same beings in different 
generations should be moved to such different manifestations of the 
same sentiment and the same sorrow. 

Death is nature's supreme abhorrence. The dark valley, with 
its weird and solemn shadows, illumined by the rays of Christi- 
anity is still the ground which man shudders to approach. The 
grim portals, and the narrow house, seem in the lapse of centuries 
to have gained rather than lost in impressive and foreboding horror. 

It must have been while musing over this puzzling fact that an 
illustrious American — gifted as a poet, and therefore gifted as a 
philosopher — wrote these graceful, memorable words : 

In the temple of Juno, at Elis, Sleep and his twin-brother, Death, were repre- 
sented as children reposing in the arms of Night. On various funeral monuments 
of the ancients the Genius of Death is sculptured as a beautiful youth, leaning on 
an inverted torch, in the attitude of repose, his wings folded and his feet crossed. 
In such peaceful and attractive foi'ms did the imagination of ancient poets and 
sculptors represent death. And these were men in whose souls the religion of 
Nature was like the light of stars, beautiful, but faint and cold! Strange, that, in 
later days, this angel of God, which leads us with a gentle hand into the " land of 
the great departed, into the silent land," should have been transformed into a mon- 
strous and terrific thing! Such is the spectral rider on the white horse;— such the 
ghastly skeleton with scythe and hour-glass ;— the Reaper, whose name is Death. 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 21 

-Whether owing to the tendencies here suggested, or to other 
promptings, the usage of paying public tribute to those who have 
gone, now admits to its privilege few who stand in relations so close 
as brother Senators. 

When a member of the Senate, weary with the toil of years, 
worn with labors which observe no hours, long and harshly criti- 
cised perhaps when the truth if known would have changed critics 
to eulogists, crowned with duties well done and honors well earned — 
when such an one, beckoned by the shado^vy hand, retreats from 
the din of life, and the gates have closed behind him forever, it is 
decorous that those who are so soon to follow him should pause, 
and bear public testimony of the esteem in which they held him, 
and of the approbation which they know he deserved. Their 
utterances may not add a cubit or an hour to his fame, but they 
strengthen and brighten the links of the chain which should bind 
men and Senators together. 

It is not my purpose to repeat the story of a career which the 
nation knows by heart. 

The Senate has heard in feeling and graceful words many inci- 
dents of a life devoted to the public service, and enduringly asso- 
ciated with events grand, arduous, and historic. 

I rose only to add my tribute of respect and admiration for the 
genius and the services of a remarkable man, and to unite with the 
people of Indiana in the grief with which they mourn the death 
of their illustrious Senator. 

As a party leader, he was too great for any party or any State 
readily to supply his place. 

As an efficient, vigilant, and able representative, he had no supe- 
rior in either House of Congress. 

Oppressed and crippled by bodily infirmity, his mind never fal- 



22 ADDRESS OF MR. BURNSIDE ON THE 

tered or flagged. Despite pain and sickness, so long as he could be 
carried to his seat he was never absent from the Senate or the com- 
mittee. No labor discouraged him, no contingency appalled him, 
no disadvantage dismayed him, no defeat disheartened him. 

Those who encountered him in debate or in affairs will never 
forget his ability, his zeal, his industry, his energy, his fertility, his 
varied powers, or above all his indomitable heart. Living in an 
era of extraordinary activities and forces, he has left a deep and 
lasting impress on his times. He will go down to a far hereafter, 
not as one who embellished and perpetuated his name by a studied 
and scholastic use of words, nor as a herald of resounding theories, 
but rather as one who day by day on the journey of life met actual 
affairs and realities and grappled them with a grasp too resolute 
and quick to loiter for the ornament or the advantage of protracted 
and tranquil meditation. 

He needs no epitaph but his name; and though brass may 
corrode, and marble molder, men will still remember Oliver 
Perry Morton as a leading and manful defender of the Republic 
in the Republic's most dire and heroic age. 



Address of Mr. Burnside, of Rhode Island. 

Mr. President, I will be pardoned, I am sure, for making 
some two or three allusions personal to myself in speaking of our 
distinguished deceased brother Senator. 

My acquaintance with him began in boyhood. We were born 
and reared in the same neighborhood. We left our homes to enter 
college the same year, he as a student at Miami University and I 
as a cadet in the United States Military Academy. 



In consequence of these early relations I have watched his career 
with great interest and pride. Our walks in life led us apart until 
the war of the rebellion, during a portion of wliich we were inti- 
mately associated, he as governor of the great State of Indiana and 
I as military commander of the Department of the Ohio. The 
friendship that had existed from boyhood was strengthened by the 
kind, strong, efficient counsel and co-operation he gave me during 
my service in that department. After the termination of this 
association, I naturally watched his career with an increased interest. 
It was with great personal satisfaction that I found him the recog- 
nized leader of the republican party upon this floor when I joined 
him here. 

In all the walks of life Morton has proved himself a great man. 
The high position which he attained was in no sense due to acci- 
dent. No fortuitous circumstances brought him into prominence. 
He did not spring from the humble walks of life and rise through 
great difficulties to eminence ; nor did he separate himself by self- 
denial from a life of ease and luxury with a view to taking upon 
himself the labors and responsibilities of a public man, which latter 
course is oftener harder to pursue than the former. Nor did he 
come from that class who are educated for the learned professions, 
from which the stepping-stone to public distinction is comparatively 
easy when the aspirants are possessed of intelligence, integrity, and 
industry, but he sprang from that great conservative class which is 
composed of men engaged in agricultural and mechanical pursuits, 
whose dispositions, as a rule, are to continue in the course upon 
which they enter until their works are crowned with moderate suc- 
cess or ended in failure. Morton, however, broke from this temp- 
tation, (if it may be so called,) and determined early in life to 
attain distinction, if possible, as a public man. By dint of great 



24 ADDEESS OF MR. BUENSIDE ON THE 

industry and economy he acquired a good education and began the 
study of law under the direction of one of Indiana's most sterling 
and distinguished men, Hon. John S. Newman, and soon acquired 
great proficiency in his profession. The example of this accom- 
plished gentleman for industry and integrity doubtless had a great 
influence upon Morton's after-life. 

From boyhood he was fond of debate upon political topics, and 
early attained prominence as a political leader. When but thirty- 
three years of age he became the candidate of his party for the high 
office of governor of his native State, and won during that canvass 
a reputation as a debater that followed him through hfe, and which 
at his death was world-wide. What gave him his greatest strength 
as a debater was his great desire and facility for learning and pre- 
senting the facts of a case. He was rarely found wrong in his 
statements, and was always ready to appeal to the records and to 
abide the results. Another prominent characteristic was his fair- 
ness. Any fact claimed by his opponent and well established by 
the record he always conceded. There was but little repetition in 
his speeches. After he had once presented his facts or theories dis- 
tinctly they were dropped until some one of his opponents made it 
necessary to refer to them again. He never wearied his political 
friends by too much speech, and always occupied his opponents. 
He rarely, if ever, indulged in personalities or in frivolities. It 
is said by those who have known him very intimately that he had 
a hard struggle with himself in early life to break the habit of in- 
dulgence in wit and ridicule which liis keen sense of humor was 
apt to lead him into. Upon the breaking out of the rebellion 
Morton at once sprang into still greater prominence. His great 
services as one of the war governors have been fully portrayed 
upon this occasion, and I will not detain the Senate by reiterating 



lilFE AND CHAEACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 25 

them. It will not be amiss, however, to refer to a few of his more 
prominent characteristics. His great care and love for the soldiers 
of his State, not only while they were in the field but after their 
return to their homes, won for him their great respect and affection. 
He was eminently patriotic. No sacrifice was too great for him to 
make in the cause of his country. 

He was a lover of law and order, and was averse to being led 
into an arbitrary exercise of authority by the emergencies of the 
war. I remember while I was in conunand of the Department of 
the Ohio, which department embraced the State of Indiana, that I 
had occasion to issue a general order with a view to reaching per- 
sons who I thought were indulging in treasonable speeches. Under 
this order some prominent citizens were arrested, and among them 
a prominent citizen of Ohio, and one of the State senators of the 
State of Indiana. Morton urgently argued with me against the 
wisdom and justice of the arrest of these citizens, and demanded 
the release of the State senator, notwithstanding the fact that he was 
one of his most bitter political opponents. He had ambition, but 
never allowed it to blind him to what he conceived to be the best 
interests of the country. He was a prominent aspirant for the 
nomination by his party at the last presidential election, and was 
doubtless sorely disappointed at his failure to receive the nomi- 
nation, but when he wrote his letter of advice to his fellow-citizens 
as to the duty of the hour, all were assured that this failure had 
engendered in him no ill-will toward his party or to the distin- 
guished gentleman who received the nomination, but quite the 
reverse; he was ready and anxious to give him his full support and 
encouragement. 

His unbounded affection for his family was one of his striking 
characteristics. His estimable wife was his almost constant com- 



26 ADDRESS OF ME. MORGAN ON THE 

panion when he was not engaged in his public duties. His devo- 
tion to his friends was marked in the extreme, which accounts for 
the great affection in which he was held by all those who were 
intimately associated with him. 

Morton was a great man. His judgment was good; his power 
of research was great, his integrity was high, his patriotism was 
lofty, his love of family and friends unlimited, his courage indom- 
itable. No feeble words of mine can express the great loss which 
this body, his native State, and our country have sustained by his 
death. 

Address of Mr. MORGAN, of Alabama. 

Mr. President, on an occasion such as this, when a nation is 
paying its tribute of respect to a great citizen, it is not fitting that 
any section of the Union should be silent. The West has spoken 
and the East has answered ; the voice of sorrow that for months 
past has wailed mournfuly along the shores of ihe lakes of the 
North is also echoed by the sighing breezes of the Gulf of Mexico. 
If this were the house of mourning, where none but those who were 
the beloved of the great Senator were expected to speak, I should 
feel that I was compelled to remain silent. But it is the Senate 
that conducts these obsequies, and the States are all here to par- 
ticipate. Indiana has suffered a bereavement in the death of an 
honored sou that touches the hearts of her people with profound 
grief; and Alabama lays upon his tomb a bough of her evergreen 
magnolia, crowned with its white emblems of peace, in token of her 
sense of the immortality of his fame, and Avith it she extends to 
Indiana the hand of sympathizing and honest-hearted friendship. 

Senator Morton did not live to see the States all reassembled in 
this Chamber. Since 1873 the grand roll-call of the States was 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 27 

never fully completed in his hearing. He was not content that it 
should be completed, under his views of the Constitution, with the 
representation which was sent here, and in this great controversy 
States stood arrayed against him, but they are now asseiiibled at his 
funeral rites. They are here as members of a bereaved family. 
They bow in chastened sorrow to the omnipotent hand that will 
soon smite others of their sons with death, and if rightly conscious 
of the imperfections of their own representatives, and if they are 
properly considerate of duty, they are prepared to bury every bitter 
resentment of the past, and to cherish only the good that has been 
evolved through their common trials and sufferings and even 
through their angry strife. 

If Senator Morton were here in person, as he will long remain 
in spirit and influence, he would realize that this full Senate is a 
power better worthy to be made useful in the high purposes of serv- 
ing the country in promoting its great moral and material interests 
than as an instrumentality of strife and in struggles for power, 
whether that power is claimed by ambitious men, or by rival sec- 
tions of the country, or by political parties. 

He would do all within the range of his great abilities to make 
the Senate worthy of the age and a pattern for the statesmen of 
coming generations. He would not waste his energies in renewing 
conflicts that are ended, nor would he encourage us to turn aside 
from our practical duties to engage in the fruitless discussion of 
past grievances, Avhether real or imaginary. With a heart truly 
and fully American, and a mind amply stored with treasures of 
knowledge, and with an energy of will of which the march of 
American progress is the truest and most vivid illustration, he 
would set to work to build up every waning industry, to renew 
hope in every languishing heart, and to open up new fields of 



28 ADDRESS OF MR. MORGAN ON THE 

enterprise to the boundless energy of our people. If he had dif- 
fered always and everywhere with the people of Alabama, they 
would not have remembered their differences a day longer than he 
had brought his great powers to this form of the service of his 
country. 

It is sad for the country that a man so capable and so trusted 
should have been removed while in the meridian of his influence 
and power. 

Senator Morton's political life was largely spent in the midst 
of war. To maintain the cause for which he struggled, he believed 
that he was compelled to lay his hand on the sword of military 
power. He grasped it firmly. He wielded it without pause or 
questioning, but with perfect loyalty to his country. 

In this he only did his duty ; for the country of his soul's allegi- 
ance required it of him. He could not have done less. However 
the laws may otherwise declare, his country where he dwells, the 
place that is sanctified with the name of home, will be the sovereign 
of an honest man's heart and will command his allegiance. 

When others thought that the sword had served its full purpose 
and should be sheathed he mistrusted that it was further needed, 
and he held to it with a firmer grasp. In this the South was 
opposed to him, and its wail of anguish was bitter against him. 
While he held the sword suspended the South had no shield for its 
uncovered bosom. It was natural that its heart should chill to- 
ward him. It would be untrue to say that it did not, and he would 
have despised the falsehood. But this attitude was changed, and 
no man was more ready than he was to recognize the new order of 
things. Almost his dying words attest the fact. 

His nature was intensely combative, but his ear was ever ready 
to listen to the bugles of truce. He did not persecute in secret 







inquisitions. He openly denounced what he conceived to be wrong 
in his opponents and demanded the vengeance of the law. How 
he acted toward his friends we were not in position to know. He 
was no conspirator. His nature was above that mean level where 
men of great powers sometimes get their consent to serve a cause 
that they even conceive to be just in the dark and devious ways of 
fraud and conspiracy. Senator Morton was an open, bold, and 
defiant antegonist. His opponents always knew where to find him, 
and when he meant to strike. In this respect even those who suf- 
fered from his blows learned to honor him. 

To do him justice in another important respect it is necessary to 
say that he lived during an era of our history beset with great 
temptations and had the fullest opportunity to grow rich by stealth, 
and yet he escaped all suspicion of dishonesty. He was an honest 
man It is here that the people have planted a white stone, and 
every contribution to his honor will cluster about it as the best 
and most enduring foundation of his immortal fame. 

His record is before the country. It is easily understood, bold, 
fearless, direct, and distinct. His individuality was so distinctive 
that it is a rare occurrence that his name has a fixed historical asso- 
ciation with his great contemporaries as the associates of his labors. 
There is no evasion or darkness in the definitions of his principles 
or policies. Most of his thoughts connected with public affairs are 
on the records of the Senate. He spoke freely on all subjects that 
he discussed, and few important measures failed to attract his atten- 
tion Yet the country never tired of listening to him, such was the 
vigor of his thoughts and the profound depth of his convictions and 
the boldness of his utterances. 

When such a man is deceived, as all men are liable to be deceived, 
as to matters of fact relating to the graver duties of government, the 



30 ADDEESS OF MR. MORGAN ON THE 

country is endangered. So much power as he possessed, when mis- 
directed, is of necessity dangerous. His record will receive impar- 
tial criticism. He would not have asked that it be forbearing. It 
contains no plea for lenient consideration. His opinions are too bold 
and too broadly and confidently stated to be drifted off into neutral 
ground. They will enter the conflict with self-asserting energy 
though their author is no longer here to defend them. In many 
important matters time alone will demonstrate their value. They 
will always be respected. In the most essential points where dif- 
ferences have existed between him and the people of Alabama, they 
have been difierences of opinion. In some respects those differences 
were in sharp and decided conflict. But in no respect was it true 
that either he or they desired to do wrong the one to the other. The 
hostility was not in the intent or the purpose. It was the conflict 
of opinions, too often, I fear, based on misconceptions of fact, the 
correction of which other evil influences rendered for the time 
impossible. 

The grand outline of the retrospect of American statesmanship 
is not marred, but is rather rendered more pleasing, as it has also 
become more a cause of national pride, by the rugged and isolated 
peak that seems to have been thrown up from lower depths by some 
great social and political revolution and to have risen high above 
the elevated plane on which so many monuments are raised to com- 
memorate our great and deathless names. Morton builded his 
own monument, no other hand assLsting. To the nation is only left 
the duty of inscribing his epitaph upon it. This should not be 
written now. It should be left to a more impartial generation. 

The great Senator rests in the bosom of a generous and grateful 
country. Millions of hearts are saddened by his loss, while they 
beat with pride at the mention of his name; and thus are cherished 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OP OLIVER P. MORTON. 31 

the memories that we style immortal. In minds alive to grateful 
remembrances, and in living, pulsating hearts, day by day, the fame 
and glory of our dead statesmen and heroes live. They are storied 
in books and sculptured in monuments, but they live on, and on, 
through ceaseless years in the hearts of the people, where they are 
never forgotten. Thus will Morton live, and thus will his fame 
be cherished so long as any who claim to be American shall exist. 
This is indeed a proud immortality. 



Address of Mr. BOOTH, of California. 

Mr. President, to epitomize the life and character of Oliver 
Perry Morton in the few moments devoted to these observances 
is impossible to mortal utterance. The stalwart proportions of his 
living presence are but realized by the void his death has made. 

But yesterday he was one of us, of like clay and passions. The 
echoes of his voice have scarcely died in this Chamber. To-day he 
is as far from us as Demosthenes or Abraham or the generations 
that perished before the flood. 

Less than most men intellectually his equals does he need the 
voice of eulogy. The clearness of his purposes, the boldness of his 
opinions, his tireless activity, his indomitable will, have impressed 
"the very age and body of the time." His life was a force which 
cannot die. 

That fireside criticism which dwells apart in the seclusion of its 
own self-importance and would not soil its dainty fingers by contact 
with affairs, which believes government is a science as exact as 
mathematics, that human nature is plastic as clay and cold as mar- 
ble, may dwarf liis image in the penny mirror it holds up to the 
universe and in which the only colossal figure it beholds is the 



32 ADDRESS OF MR. BOOTH ON THE 

reflection of itself; but he has made his own place in history "safe 
'gainst the tooth of time and razure of oblivion." 

He lived in an heroic age — ^this age — an age so great that the 
distance of intervening centuries will be necessary to measure its 
lieroism, its achievements, and its sacrifices. 

We, as Americans, must be excusable for believing, we should be 
inexcusable if we did not believe, that no political question of graver 
consequence to all succeeding time was ever confronted by any 
people than that which culminated in our civil war. History will 
record that the war was the inevitable result of an irrepressible 
conflict of moral forces, for which peace had no arbitrament. 
Morton's life was cast in a State where this conflict of opinion was 
eager, passionate, and doubtful. He was at the meeting of the cur- 
rents in the circling of the maelstrom. What to others was a con- 
viction, a sentiment, to him became an inspiration and a passion. 
He was intensely American. For his large nature, and for his 
great ambition too, the continent was none too wide. That his 
country should play a subordinate part in human affairs never 
entered his imagination to conceive. He would have enlarged the 
bounds of destiny to give it scope and amplitude. The sentiment 
that this is a " nation, one, indivisible, indestructible," so permeated 
his intellect that any other seemed political profanation and sacrilege. 
With him this was not a theory of construction, but a source and 
center; not an abstraction, but living faith. Not Webster has 
expressed his faith with more massive strength, nor Baker witli 
more impassionate fervor. 

No man had an earlier or clearer apprehension of the magnitude 
of the war on whose verge we stood and the tremendous issues it 
involved. Of Titan mold, near to nature, elemental powers were 
his familiars. He had an instinctive sense of the awful forces that 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 33 

are unleashed by war. He knew that in the air, so still it would 
not stir the floating down, the fury of the tempest slept. 

In the halcyon days, amid delusive promises of peace, he saw that 
war was inevitable, and rose to the supreme height of the occasion. 
In a speech on the 2 2d of November, 1860, which rang through 
the country like a call to arms, he said : 

Seven years is but a day in the life-time of a nation, and I would rathei' come 
out of a struggle at the end of that time defeated in arms, conceding independence 
to successful revolution, than to purchase present peace by the concession of a prin- 
ciple that must inevitably explode this nation into small, dishonored fragments. 

He flunked nothing, concealed nothing. He knew the uncertain- 
ties of war, its dread sacrifices, and declared that all these, though 
followed by defeat, were better than inaction or the compromise of 
a principle he deemed essential to the existence of any republic on 
this continent. 

This was at once his confession of political faith and the key- 
note of his character. In the cause he championed, he would have 
dared fate itself to the lists, and matched his will against the courses 
of the stars. 

There is neither time nor necessity to trace his career. To leave 
out Morton and his influence would be to rewrite the history of 
this country for the past eighteen years, and to modify it for all 
time to come. In the great struggle on which the existence of the 
Union was staked he held the central fort. No living man can 
tell what the result would have been if he had not been where and 
what he was. 

In character his will dominated his intellect, great as that was. 
He seemed incapable of indecision. To resolve was to leave doubt 
behind. Thought, resolution, action, were coinstant. 

As a debater he was an athlete trained down to pure muscle. In 
speech, careless of the graces of oratory and polish of style, his 



34 ADDRESS OF MR. BOOTH OX THE 

earnestness enchained attention, his directness carried conviction, 
and there was a natural symmetry in the strength of his statement 
above the reach of art. 

He was a partisan; instinct and experience taught him that 
organization was essential to the triumph of any political principle 
or the successful administration of a popular government. He was 
a born leader, conscious of his power and jealous of his right to 
lead. He was ambitious; but blessed is the memory of him whose 
ambition is at one with the best aspirations of humanity, whose 
death is a loss to the weak, and whose grave is wet with the tears 
of the humble and the despised. 

Large brained, large framed, and brawny muscled, his vigorous 
health, freedom of motion, physical independence, manly presence, 
were his joy and pride, and a part of that full endowment of mind 
and body which gave him commanding rank. But when at life's 
meridian he was stricken with the cruel paralysis from which he 
was never to recover, he accepted his lot without repining. What 
to another would have been a warning to quit active service and an 
excuse for ease and rest, to him was the occasion of increased ex- 
ertion and mental activity. The broken sword only made the 
combat closer. 

When the fatal symptoms of his malady appeared some months 
before his death, he said to a friend that he realized the end had 
come, but he felt his career was incomplete, his, life-work not 
finished. Perhaps he felt, too, that death was stepping between 
him and the great prize of his personal ambition. He knew the 
night was settling on the home of which his love was ihe day- 
spring. 

From that time the American people watched the wasting sands 
of his life and counted his failing pulse. He fought death as an 



LIFE AND CHAEACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 35 

equal for every inch of time until " worn out," — worn out by long 
suffering and hard conflict, he yielded to the conqueror of all. 

However long expected, the death of one we honor or love comes 
at last as a shock. No preparation can take away its final sudden- 
ness. There is not a precinct in all this broad land where Morton's 
death was not felt. The nation was bereaved. His State was his 
chief mourner. Political friends and opponents vied with each 
other to honor his memory. A hundred thousand men, women, and 
children took a last look at his face, softened and refined by death, 
every trace of suffering, every mark of conflict gone. On a chill 
November afternoon a vast concourse followed him to the grave. 
The shades of night were falling when the last rite was spoken 
and the great crowd dispersed, leaving him alone with the dead. 

There will be music and song, revelry and mirth. " The seasons 
in their bright round will come and go; hope, and joy, and great 
ambition will rise up as they have risen." Generations will pass 
on the swift flight of years. Battle-storms will smite the earth, 
peace smile upon it, plenty crown it, love bless it. History will 
write great chapters in the book of time. He will come no more. 
His life is "blended with the mysterious tide which bears upon its 
current" events, institutions, empire, in the a^vful sweep of destiny. 
Nor praise nor censure, nor love nor hate, "nothing can touch him 
further." 



Address of Mr. Anthony, of Rhode Island. 

Mr. President, Oliver P. Morton was born a leader of men, 
with the sagacity to perceive, with the judgment to determine, with 
the courage to execute. Had he chosen arms for his profession, he 
would have made a great general, or he might have rivaled the 



36 ADDRESS OF MR, ANTHONY ON THE 

fame of the naval hero whose illustrious name he bore. In. what- 
ever pursuit, he would not have failed of eminence, for he pos- 
sessed the essential elements of strength. To a will which nothing 
could subdue he joined an industry which nothing could fatigue, a 
capacity for labor seldom rivaled in the annals of American states- 
manship. Taking little upon authority, he applied himself to the 
original source of investigation and thoroughly informed himself 
upon every matter on which he was required to act. No member 
of this body gave a more uniformly intelligent vote; and this was 
true of small matters as well as of great. His comprehension 
grasped every subject of our deliberations. Nothing was too form- 
idable for him to undertake; nothing was so minute as to escape his 
observation. Feebler than any of his associates in physical health, 
he was surpassed by none of them in the amount of labor which he 
accomplished. He did not recognize in his infirmities a reason for 
avoiding any duty imposed upon him, or that he imposed ujjon 
himself. The mind dominated the body and compelled its enfeebled 
and exhausted functions to perform the full service of a vigorous 
organization. 

Deeply impressed with the truth of his convictions, he supported 
them with an earnestness born of sincerity, with a fullness of in- 
formation due to his marvelous habit of industry, and with a power 
that sprung from large natural ability disciplined by severe training; 
but he supported them only in fair and manly debate. He never 
indulged in trickery; he seemed to disdain even the trickery of 
rhetoric. The solid logic of his arguments was encumbered by 
little ornament, and his array of facts depended for their effect, 
apart from their inherent force, upon the clearness of his statement 
and the strength of his presentation. 

Simple in his manner, frugal in his habits, he maintained through 



LIFE AND CHARACTEE OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 37 



a life devoted to the public service an honorable poverty, content to 
support the dignity of official position upon the emolument which 
the law assigned to it. 

I do not propose to attempt an analysis of his character or to 
repeat the story of his life that has been so well told, — of his early 
discipline in the stern but healthful school of poverty; of the won- 
derful executive power, the vigor, the foresight, the bold prudence, 
the patriotism which he exliibited in the gubernatorial chair of his 
native State; of his long and distinguished service in this Chamber; 
of the heroic struggle which he held mth mortal disease, sustaining 
life by his indomitable will, which seemed to gather to itself the 
energy of every failing organ, and with the accumulated strength 
to hurl defiance at the power of death. But the supreme hour 
arrived, and he obeyed the inevitable summons, as all who went 
before him had done, as all who come after him must do, and with 
the affecting words "I am worn out," he yielded up a life which he 
had identified with the history of his country by wise counsels, by 
brave leadership, by solid achievements. He died in the prime and 
vigor of his intellectual strength and in the midst of his usefulness. 
Yet we may not call that life a short one whose work if distributed 
over the allotted period of human existence would have crowned 
the three-score years and ten with an honorable and an enduring 

record. 

Mr. President, the shaft of death has been hurled in this Chamber 
of late with fearful frequency, sparing neither eminence, nor use- 
fulness, nor length of service. No one can predict where it will 
next strike, whose seat will next be vacated. With our faces to the 
setting sun we tread the declining path of life, and the shadows 
lengthen and darken behind us; the good, the true, the brave fall 
before our eyes, but the Republic survives. The stream of events 



38 ADDRESS OF ME. WADLEIGH ON THE 

flows steadily on, and the agencies that seemed to direct and control 
its current, to impel or to restrain its force, sink beneath its surface, 
which they disturb merely by a ripple. 



Address of Mr. ^^^ADLEIGH, of Ne^v Hampshire. 

Mr. President, my acquaintance with the late Senator Morton 
began with my admission to a seat in this Chamber in 1873. Soon 
after, at his request, I was placed upon the committee of which he 
was chairman. Personal contact with him increased the admiration 
and respect which his great ability and patriotic services had created 
in my mind and led to feelings of friendship, on my part at least, 
which induce me to pay this humble tribute to his memory. 

Oliver P. Morton was essentially a self-made man, the architect 
of his own fortune. Obscurity shadowed his early life. Four years 
were spent by him in a hatter's shop. An unquenchable thirst for 
knowledge and a sleepless ambition impelled him to acquire an 
education, which he did by arduous endeavor, and at an early age 
he was admitted to the bar. His great ability was soon recognized, 
and when but twenty-nine years old he was chosen a circuit judge 
by the Legislature of Indiana. But a nature like his could not be 
satisfied with the calm repose of the bench. At the end of a year 
he resigned and returned to the conflicts of his profession. Events 
were soon to place him in a broader, loftier arena of action than 
any tribunal of justice. The repeal of the Missouri compromise in 
1854 aroused a storm of indignation which swept over the Northern 
States like a whirlwind and seemed for a time to have annihilated 
the old political organizations. Among the ardent and generous 
young men who then severed their party tics to lead the popular 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 39 

movement which culminated in the formation of the republican 
party Oliver P. Morton was first and foremost. 

Such was his recognized capacity for leadership that in 1856, 
when only thirty-three years of age, he was nominated by acclama- 
tion the republican candidate for governor of Indiana. In the 
canvass that followed he exhibited pre-eminent ability, but was 
defeated. His triumph was only postponed. In 1860 he was 
chosen lieutenant-governor, and, by the election of Governor Lane 
to this Senate, made the chief magistrate of his native State. 

Hardly had he taken his seat when the grand drama of the civil 
war opened and cast upon him labors, cares, and responsibilities 
such as few men could bear. He was equal to the great emergency. 
During the four long, bloody years of gigantic warfare his unpar- 
alleled executive ability attracted the attention and admiration of 
the whole country. He seemed able to foresee and to provide for 
every contingency. He created a great arsenal, which not only 
supplied the needs of Indiana, but those of other States and some- 
times those of the nation. He contracted for and furnished vast 
stores of clothing and provisions for the soldiers of the Union. 
Again and again he raised troops before they were called for, so 
that a single telegraphic dispatch from Washington hurled them 
like thunderbolts to the crimsoned edge of battle. Inspired by his 
energy Indiana became a vast camp. Her patriotic women vied 
with each other in their devotion to their country ; the valor of her 
sons won unfading glory on numerous blood-stained fields. Neigh- 
boring States threatened with invasion looked for aid to her and her 
great governor. Yet he had to contend with an opposition which 
organized a conspiracy whose net-work spread over the whole State, 
threatening to wrap it in the flames of civil war. When by a 
political revolution all the offices of the State, except his oAvn, were 



40 ADDRESS OF MK. WADLEIGH ON THE 

intrusted to his opponents, he appealed to the loyalty of his people 
for means to carry on the government and prosecute the war for 
the Union. 

By private subscription, by the assumption of staggering liabili- 
ties which threatened to ruin himself and his friends, he met the 
indebtedness of the State, paid her governmental expenses, and 
raised, fed, armed, disciplined, and sent to the field thousands of 
her bravest sons. Fired by a sublime patriotism, he defended the 
cause of his country and urged her children to preserve her from 
destruction. The history of that stupendous conflict contains no 
more glorious record than his. 

In 1864 he was again elected governor, and in 1867 he took his 
seat in this Chamber as a Senator from Indiana. That seat he held 
more than ten years, to the day of his death. His course and his 
achievements here are read and known of all men and are a part of 
the history of the time. Here, upon a new arena, he supplemented 
his lofty reputation for administrative energy by one equally lofty 
for intellectual power in discussing and solving the greatest and 
gravest questions. As much as any other Senator, he led the debates 
and guided the action of this body. The last ten years of his life 
were one constant and hopeless struggle with the incurable disease 
from whose grasp there was no escape, and which day by day 
steadily approached the citadel of life. He knew that his days 
were numbered and were few; yet he looked firmly in the face of 
the relentless, torturing, conquering enemy and kept on his way. 
He shirked no labor, however arduous ; he left no duty unperformed. 
His devotion to duty was heroic. His journey to the Pacific coast 
in the last months of his life was marked by prodigies of herculean 
labor. Ease, comfort, nay, even life itself seemed of little conse- 
quence to him when compared with the imperious duty to which he 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 41 



seemed to have bound himself of preserving the results of the civil 
war to the people of the Unitai States forever. AYorn out by 
ceaseless labor in the performance of public duties, in the armor of 
battle he calmly met the stroke of death. 

In robust manliness the mtellect of Senator Morton was unex- 
celled. His speeches were marked by logical force, clear percep- 
tion, and a strength of statement which resembled demonstration. 
Though destitute of rhetoric and bare of ornament, their massive 
force almost silenced doubt and compelled conviction. Even his 
extemporaneous efforts had the symmetry of labored production. 

Like most really great men the deceased Senator was profoundly 
sincere and earnest. He despised the petty trickery of politics. 
Incapable of treachery, he was slow to suspect it in others. Con- 
fident in his strength, he scorned the arts of weakness. He ha^l, 
too, the generosity and magnanimity which are inseparable from 
true greatness. No party conflicts tinged his personal relations with 
bitterness. Nor can I believe that he was not a lover of peace. 
But he desired a peace based upon justice, and therefore enduring 
forever. He could not accept a peace which he believed was based 
upon injustice and wrong. Against wrong and injustice of all kinds, 
and upon whomsoever exercised, he fought with indomitable courage 
and unbending will. In his tomb lies the boldest champion of the 
oppressed, the sternest foe of oppression. His sympathies were 
bounded by no Imes of creed nor condition nor race, but were broad 
as humanity. In the last days of his life he sought to cover with 
the £egis of his great name the despised and hat^d Chmese immi- 
grants of the Pacific slope. He was equally regardless of popularity 
in his advocacy of the claim of women to political rights. 

His integrity was untarnished. Every attack upon it left it 
brighter than before. Plain, simple, and frugal in his habits, after 



42 ADDRESS OF MR. MITCHELL ON THE 

a long and illustrious public life he died in comparative poverty. 
He had an uncompromising hatred of political bribery and corrup- 
tion whether in friend or foe. Those of us who heard can never 
forget his appeals to us to thrust from this Chamber a political friend 
who was believed to have gained an election by bribery. 

No quality was more conspicuous in the character of Senator 
Morton than his lofty patriotism. Ardently loving his country, 
he sought to make it a temple of liberty, to which might come the 
oppressed and down-trodden of all races, where universal education 
should difiuse its blessings, in which might dwell in security and 
peace a free, happy, and united people. 

To that cause he devoted himself; to it he gave the strength of 
his intellect and the warmth of his heart, and in it he never faltered 
till there came to his bed-side the summons of all-conquering Death. 
Linked to that cause, his fame will endure till history shall have 
perished and its records shall be wrapped in the darlmess of endless 
night. 



Address of Mr. Mitchell, of Oregon. 

Mr. President, the high estimation in which Senator Morton 
was held by the people of the State I in part represent on this floor, 
coupled with the fact that from the day I first made his acquaint- 
ance, in February, 1873, until his death, he was my ardent, un- 
swerving, personal friend, forbids that I should remain silent now. 

Oregon, no less than Indiana, mourns the death of a great man. 
The telegraphic flash that told of his departure, although not unex- 
pected, touched the hearts of her people with a pang of unmistaka- 
ble sadness; clothed her dwellings, her churches, her temples of 
justice, her executive, legislative, and administrative departments 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 43 

in the habiliments of mourning. And now here, in this seat of his 
former greatness and from which for ten long years his words of 
Avisdom and power went forth challenging the admiration of friend 
and foe alike and giving direction to the policy of States, tho State 
of Oregon, through one of her representatives, would crave the high 
privilege of contributing a word to his memory; of placing upon 
his tomb a single wreath, formed though it may be of wild flowers, 
gathered promiscuously on a distant shore and wrought into shape 
by unskillful hands. 

Senator Morton visited Oregon during the past summer and 
came in contact with many of her people of both political parties. 
And although prior to his going, while his great ability was con- 
ceded by all, he was regarded by many who had never met him as 
cold, selfish, repellant, when he came away, as I had occasion to learn 
by traveling through the State shortly afterward, this opinion had 
radically changed ; and it was my pleasure to hear many of the lead- 
ing men of the democratic party of that State testify in words of 
unqualified praise, not only as to his goodness of heart, his kindness 
of manner, his amiable disposition, and his courteous demeanor to- 
ward all, but also as to their belief in the integrity of all his pur- 
poses. 

It is one of the misfortunes of public men to be misjudged by 
those who know them not. Partisan misrepresentation has done 
more in the years that are past, and is doing more to-day, to debauch 
public virtue and lower the standard of national integrity in the 
estimation of the masses than has the aggregated actual shortcomings 
of all our public men. And perhaps no man with equal position of 
power and influence in the nation was ever more misunderstood by 
those who did not know him personally than was Oliver P. Mor- 
ton. By those who did have the fortune to know him well, aside 



44 ADDEESS OF MR. MITCHELL ON THE 

from any considerations arising from his eminent public life, his true, 
sympathizing heart, his gentleness of manner, his uniform kindness 
will be cherished in grateful remembrance to the end of life. 

And it was in my judgment this trait in his character, this desire 
to befriend the helpless, to sustain the oppressed, to lift up the lowly 
and the down-trodden, more than anything else that caused him in 
these halls year after year to sustain with more than Roman gran- 
deur the cause of the colored people of the South. No right of 
theirs, civil or political, was ever stricken down with his consent, 
or without his manly protest being recorded against the act. No 
opportunity ever escaped him of saying a kind word in their behalf, 
or of doing any act that would better their condition or tend to ad- 
vance their prosperity. He was the friend of the colored race, as 
the record of his public life will abundantly testify; and in his 
death their cause in the national Senate has lost one of its ablest 
champions and most valiant defenders. Around his tomb they in 
future years will in countless numbers gather in the native simplicity 
of undisguised gratitude to testify their reverence for his memory, 
while his name will live with them as a household word to be taught 
to their children and their children's children down through many 
generations. 

Mr. President, it was my fortune to serve with Governor Mor- 
ton on the Committee on Privileges and Elections from the time I 
took my seat in the Senate until his death, a period of over four and 
a half years. During this period the amount of work performed 
by him as chairman of that committee was prodigious. The various 
contests for seats in this body, the great presidential controversy of 
the last year involving investigations by that commitfse into the 
elections in several States, were well calculated to tax the physical 
endurance of the most vigorous constitution and ruffle the disposi- 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 45 



tion of the most patient mind. Yet through all these years of ex- 
citing interest, of almost superhuman work upon the part of the 
chairman of that committee, I never once knew him t» be late to a 
committee meeting, never saw him in the least disturbed in temper; 
on the contrary, always patient, affable, companionable; always 
meeting his colaborers with a smile of welcome, always parted with 
words of kindness. There it was, Mr. President, I learned to love 
him and appreciate his noble soul; there I estimated the high qual- 
ities of his heart— those of his mind were known throughout the 
world; and there I learned how very false, how severely unjust, 
was any criticism that would rob him of those qualities of true 
gentleness, of high sense of honor, of unreserved friendsliip, so pe- 
culiarly characteristic of his whole nature. 

Mr. President, a great man and, knowing him as I did, I am con- 
strained to say, a good man has fallen; not in the morning of active 
life, nor yet in the "sere and yellow leaf," but in the meridian of 
his usefulness and power. The solemnity of this hour, these crowded 
galleries, these emblems of mourning, these idle hands and attentive 
ears all unite in expressions of heart-felt sorrow. The voice of 
partizanship is hushed m this Chamber to-day and throughout the 
nation as well, for all the people and the people's representatives 
stand with bowed heads in profound respect at the tomb of one of 
the nation's greatest men. The Senate of the United States can but 
feel that a power in the elements of its ever-living existence, its con- 
tinuing intellectual conflicts, has departed, that one of its greatest 
lights has gone out in the darkness of death forever. How rapidly 
are the men whose voices have been heard in these halls being sum- 
moned to that "undiscovered country from whose bourne no trav- 
eler returns." In the less than five years that I have been here 
nine of those who have sat here during that time have gone down 



46 ADDRESS OF MR. PADDOCK ON THE 

"into the dark valley/' — Wilson, Sumner, Buckingham, Ferry, 
Johnson, Pratt, Caperton, Bogy, and Morton. Truly 

Our lives are rivers, gliding free 
To that unfathomed boundless sea— 

The silent grave. 
Thither all earthly pomp and boast 
Roll, to be swallowed up and lost 

In one dark wave. 

Well did the poet say — 

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud? 
Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, 
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave. 
He passeth from life to his rest in the grave. 

The hand of the king that the scepter hath borne, 
The brow of the priest that the miter hath worn, 
The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave 
Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave. 

Oh! the capacity and the remorselessness of that grave to which 
we are all so rapidly hastening. 

Earth has hosts, but thou canst show 

Many a million for her one; 
Through thy gates the mortal flow 
Has for countless years rolled on. 
Back from the tomb 
No step has come; 
There fixed till the last trumpet's sound 
Shall bid thy prisoners be unbound. 

Senator Morton is dead, but the record of his life shall live 
through the centuries, casting light, and not gloom, upon the page 
of the faithful historian that shall record it. It shall be to his mem- 
ory a mausoleum more enduring than that of marble, for there will 
it be written in imperishable sentences, " He was in the nation's fo- 
rnmjidus et audax and in the walks of private life Jidus Achates. 



Address of Mr. PADDOCK, of Nebraska. 
Mr. President, on behalf of the people of the great trans-Mis- 
souri country, whom in part I have the honor to represent upon this 
floor, whose interests Senator Morton always advocated and de- 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 47 

defended, whose earnest, faithful friend he always was, I beg to add 
my poor, brief word of eulogy to those which have already been so 
fitly, so eloquently spoken here to-day. 

I never saw Senator Morton rise to address the Senate during 
our brief service together here when I was not oppressed by the fear 
that it might be his last effort in this Chamber. Indeed he appeared 
to me as one standing ever in the very shadow of the uplifted hand 
of the angel of death, ready and waiting for the always impending, 
the always expected blow. 

He rose from his chair with great difficulty, and often undoubt- 
edly with much pain. Frequently while speaking he was compelled, 
from sheer physical exhaustion, to resume his seat; and some of the 
greatest efforts of his life were made while sitting in yonder chair. 
A less determined spirit would have succumbed to so serious a 
physical derangement; but his great intellect seemed to become 
clearer, brighter, more vigorous, his iron will to strengthen, his moral 
courage to increase, as his physical organism became weaker from 
the attacks of the insidious disease that was slowly but surely under- 
mining it. 

I have seen the mighty oak, with his giant bole symmetrical and 
strong, with its wealth of graceful limbs, with its glory of leaf and 
shade — forming, all in all, one of the highest types of blended power 
and beauty in nature — a very monarch among his fellows, to whom 
they seemed to mutely bow, as if with acknowledgment of primacy. 
Afterward I have seen this wonder of the forest — which nature had 
so lavishly expended her forces to upbuild, and which had during 
many generations withstood the assaults of the angry tempests, gain- 
ing in each struggle increased development and strength — suddenly 
rent and riven, a deepened wound upon its noble trunk pointing 
out the lightning's track ; and yet its umbrageous canopy of limb 



48 ADDRESS OP MR. PADDOCK ON THE 

and leaf appeared, if possible, more perfect, more beautiful than 
ever. I cannot tell — perhaps no one but the great Creator himself 
will ever know — whether there may not have been specially im- 
parted to it, through some Dryad medium, something of that force 
of will from the source of all power which gave to that charred 
and broken and wounded trunk the needed strength to draw from 
the fruitful soil the sustaining elements necessary to the continuance 
of its great life. A few years later I have found this stupendous 
growth of nature a blasted, withered thing. A second bolt from 
Jove's awful hand had descended and robbed it forever of life and 
strength and beauty; for the very last time it had "flung down its 
green glories to battle with the winter's storm." 

In respect of its inherent strength, its remarkable development, 
its superlative power and endurance at the maturity of its growth, 
entitling it to superior rank among its fellows as well as in its final 
blight and decay, this wonderful creation of nature was aptly illus- 
trative of the great life of the deceased Senator before whose open 
grave to-day we mourn. To him there was given a mental and phys- 
ical organism with each faculty, each force, so carefully, so perfectly 
adjusted to every other, the whole constituting a manhood of such 
symmetry and strength and power that in any sphere of life must 
have commanded for him superior station among his fellows. En- 
dowments so rare were his that of their own force, by their own 
momentum, they impelled him to the fore-front, to intellectual pri- 
macy, to leadership; and this position once secured was easily held 
through that instinctive concession of precedence which the masses 
of men always make to the possessor of such faculties. As the oak 
grew broader and stronger from its tempest conflicts, so did this 
noble manhood broaden and strengthen in the encounters incident 
to a life of leadership among men. 



LIFE AND CHAEACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 



49 



Those of us who were with Senator Morton here did know and 
did appreciate him; and well now can we testify to his greatness. 
We do indeed know with what God-like manfulness, with what self- 
reverence, with what self-control, with what power of will he did 
deport and maintain himself after a great part of the forces of his 
physical nature had been blasted by an invisible blow from that 
mysterious power which, at will, sends the shaft that strikes to death 
the forest oak, or the shock that palsies the body of a leader of men. 
We, sir, do well remember that with all this blight upon his phys- 
ical powers, the great Senator bore an intellectual lance to the very 
last day of his career in this Chamber which no adversary ever de- 
spised or was over-eager to measure. Often during the period of 
my service here have I seen the whole Senate filled with admiration 
of him, when, after many days, perhaps weeks, of continuous debate 
on some important question in which he had constantly participated, 
and when the endurance of even the very strongest had been greatly 
overtaxed, he rose, and with no external evidence of weariness, re- 
stated, reviewed all the arguments of perhaps a dozen adversaries 
in the discussion, and Avith one great masterful overpowering pres- 
entation of the law and the facts in the case answered them all at 
once, leaving his opponents if not utterly overcome, at least con- 
vinced that their case had been greatly damaged by the blows of an 
intellectual giant, and his own party colleagues satisfied that the sub- 
ject had been exhausted and no further effort on their part would 
be necessary or useful. When "the full river of his speech came 
down" upon an opposing disputant with its richly laden argosies of 
fact and precedent— of thought, philosophy, and logic— if his oppo- 
nent, himself, was not a master in debate he was sure to be over- 
whelmed, for only such an one could stand at all against the almost 
resistless current of his argument. 



60 ADDRESS OF MR. PADDOCK ON THE 

Mr. President, this was Senator Morton as you and I and all 
of us knew him ; but, sir, there was a good deal of him beyond all 
this which none of us ever did, or ever can, exactly know. The 
silent inner life — the unspoken thoughts — the heart-struggles of this 
great man in his continual conflict with the disease which, first by 
a sudden and terrible, but only partially successful blow — and 
afterward by insidious approaches waged unceasing war against his 
physical nature — if they could be fully written out would make 
such a page of eulogy as alone would secure for him the most endur- 
ing immortality. But they will never be fully known until that 
great day when all the secrets of the heart shall be laid bare; they 
went down with him into the grave — into the grave did I say, sir? 
No ! they went along with that brave spirit of which they were begot- 
ten to be present as witnesses at the great final accounting, to vouch 
for the proper use of the wonderful powers so generously loaned 
him from the common store upon which the drafts of mortals are 
honored — as they are worthy — as they have need. 

Mr. President, who of us has not now in his memory, photo- 
graphed there ineffaceably, that sad, thoughtful, but resolute face, 
as through the corridors and into this Chamber, borne in his chair 
by two stalwart men, he came to his great daily service? The noisy 
throng in the passages became silent and gave way at his approach 
with the same instinctive reverence that greets the gallant soldier 
who has borne a distinguished part in a memorable battle when 
afterward he is brought from the field weary, worn, wounded, and 
dying. The doors flew open before him always as if by magic, 
and party spirit could at no time run so high as to cause to be with- 
held from him, when he entered here, the most cordial, the most 
sincere, the most respectful greeting from every Senator present. 
And who of us will forget the charming heartiness of his greeting. 



LIFE AND CHAEACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 51 

Idndliness, and geniality toward all, the lowliest equally with the 
highest? 

But, Mr. President, Senator Morton has gone. His voice will 
never again be heard in this Chamber. His great spirit, his noble 
example, his valued precepts, will remain for our guidance, but we 
shall see him no more here forever. At length the death-shaft 
struck him full and strong and he fell to rise no more. 

O, what a fall was there, my countrymen ! 
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down. 

One of the bravest and truest and strongest ; one for whose voice 
the nation listened in the hour of peril ; one to whose judgment the 
people deferred when the country was in trouble and in distress; a 
patriot, a practical statesman, a man of work, a man of immortal 
deeds, a kindly, generous man withal, is gone. Let the nation — 
let all the people mourn ! 



Address of Mr. Bruce, of Mississippi. 

Mr. President, the strong true men of a people are always 
public benefactors. They do work, not only directly beneficial to 
their communities, but by the utterance of noble thoughts and the 
infusion of a manly spirit into public life and administration they 
put in operation forces which in their effects are of greater moment 
to their fellow-citizens than the immediate and specific labors per- 
formed. The death of such men is a public calamity because there 
are lost to the country not only their active energies but the influence 
and stimulus of their personal presence. As a compensation for the 
evil that death works a people in the removal of its great leaders 
there remain behind the memory of their public services, the effect 
of their example, and the subtile influence of the truths uttered and 



52 ADDRESS OF MR. BRUCE ON THE 

illustrated by their lives. Occasions like this furnish, therefore, not 
only appropriate opportunities to commemorate the services and 
virtues of the dead, but of instruction and profit to the living by 
calling attention to those characteristics and qualities that have 
made the lives of the departed useful and memorable. 

My estimate of Oliver P. Morton embraces mainly the ideas 
of his character formed from personal contact in the Senate and 
personal observation of him while discharging the duties of his 
public life. He impressed me as a man of catholic spirit and 
judgments. 

Born and reared in a section whose type of thought on both 
political and moral questions differed from the ideas of the South, 
receiving his distinctive 'and permanent character from a period in 
which the conflicting thought of the country had been intensified 
and more clearly articulated by the passions and struggles of a great 
civil conflict, he was a representative of his section upon both the 
civil and ethical questions of the day ; but in no oficnsive sense was 
he, as a public man, sectional. 

In all of those great judgments which entered into the formation 
and administration of government, that were the basis of the legis- 
lation enacted in the interests of the whole country, there was neither 
sectional temper nor purpose. 

Among the manly and honorable qualities exhibited by the 
deceased Senator was the kindly and considerate temper manifested 
personally toward those who were his opponents in the contests and 
discussions growing out of party differences or the policies and 
measures of government. 

So prominent an actor in the public life of his day, so earnest in 
his thought and ajjorressive in his endeavors to further what he con- 
ceived to be right, it would be singular if the angular points in 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON, 



53 



party life had not sometimes originated unpleasant personal differ- 
ences and collisions. Such collisions, however, were rare in his 
case, because he was just and fair in his treatment of those whose 
ideas he not unfrequently was compelled to combat and whose 
measures he felt impelled to pronounce unwise and hurtful. 

A man of mature and positive thought, he was decided in the 
maintenance of any opinion he expressed and sincere in maintaining 
any measure he advocated, but he conceded like sincerity of purpose 
to his opponents. 

While earnest to severity in his opposition to principles, institu- 
tions, and measures that seemed unfriendly to the public interest 
or dangerous to the rights of the people, he was withal deferential 
to the personal advocates of the very measures that conscientious 
considerations led him to oppose and sometimes even to denounce. 
What to the superficial observer appeared to be personal bitter- 
ness was personal earnestness, and what seemed illiberal to his polit- 
ical opponents was no more than the stringent judgments entertained 
by him on questions that affected not only the interests of the indi- 
vidual citizen but the people of all classes. Beneath a severe exterior 
was a kindly heart, and back of the great partisan leader were the 
broad wise opinions of the patriot and the statesman, who knew that 
the best interests of the people forbade any concessions to unreason- 
able prejudices or trifling or tenderness in dealing with those who 
either lightly esteemed or recklessly invaded the rights of the 
humblest American citizen. 

Whether contemplating Oliver P. Morton as the governor of 
a great State in the critical period of civil war, exhibiting wisdom 
in his plans and discretion, energy, and courage in execution thereof, 
or observing him as a member of the National Senate, in discussion 
and counsel upon the grave questions of legislation and administra- 



, 



54 ADDRESS OF MR. BRUCE ON THE 

tration, involving the complex and multiplied interests of a great 
nation, I was impressed that he understood both the philosophy and 
practice of wise government, and possessed not merely the qualities 
of a great political leader, but in a notable and remarkable measure 
the elements of a great statesman, understanding the genius of our 
institutions no less than the necessities and demands of our great 
country. A generation hence and his opinions and judgments on 
fundamental and grave questions will be cited and revered as are 
now those of the fathers of the Republic. 

I would do injustice to my own feelings and that of my race did 
I not refer to the relations that Senator Morton sustained to us and 
the services rendered in our behalf. No public man of his day, with 
the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Sumner, was 
better known to the colored people of the South than Oliver P. 
Morton, and none more respected and revered. 

In 1865, before he had entered upon his senatorial career. Sen- 
ator Morton expressed opinions that suggested grave doubts of the 
wisdom of the measures which contemplated immediate enfranchise- 
ment of my people. These measures were in conflict with the 
sentiment and estimates of even many of the friends of the negro, 
persons who had labored most earnestly for his freedom; were 
opposed by the ancient prejudices of centuries; and there was no 
historical precedent authorizing such radical measures or that seemed 
to give guarantee and promise of their success. 

Appreciating the responsibility of his acts as a public man and 
the delicacy and difficulties of the problem of reconstruction, he did 
not at that time take the pronounced and forward position, subse- 
quently so ably held by him, in behalf and defense of the rights of 
this people. The shock to the public sentiment and prejudices of 
an entire section, involved in the sudden introduction of this large 



LIFE AND CHAEACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 



55 



and new element into the politics of the country, was feared and 
deprecated, and the competency of a people so long enslaved and 
consequently uneducated and unaccustomed to participate in public 
affairs to perform satisfactorily the important functions that would 
be devolved upon them in their new sphere as citizens seemed to 
him questionable. A more thorough consideration of this question, 
however, in all of its relations — local and national— led to a revision 
of the opinions expressed in 1865, and upon these latter judgments 
of the question his subsequent public action was based, and by them 
his public career is to be judged. Two facts prominently challenged 
attention and demanded recognition in any philosophy that was 
broad enough to compass equally the interests of each class and 
every section of the country. The emancipation of more than four 
millions of former bondsmen was an accomplished fact. The 
political relations of eleven great communities were ruptured and 
imperatively demanded restoration. The question holding these 
two determining factors must be settled on a philosophy as broad 
as the facts embraced. Emancipation — that its beneficent ends 
might be attained and adequate readjustment of these disturbed re- 
lations of the political communities of a great section be made- 
involved reorganization of both the social and industrial elements 
of the South; and this reorganization, to be just, harmonious, peace- 
ful, and fruitful of public content and public quiet, demanded the 
enfranchisement of the negro. The liberties and securities that 
rendered emancipation valuable to him could only be sufficiently 
attained when he was clothed with the power of self-protection by 
becoming a personal and actual participant in the creation and ad- 
ministration of government. 

Reconstruction of the Southern States— a restoration of these 
political communities to participation in the conduct of the Federal 



56 ADDRESS OP ME. BRUCE ON THE 

Government — could only become real and permanent, and subserve 
all of its purposes, when all classes of the community should be 
equally protected and equally cordial in obedience to the law and 
cheerfulness in submission to its demands ; and this cheerfulnes and 
cordial response to civic obligations, and conscientious recognition of 
the rights of society and individuals, could only exist among the 
communities generally when every member, by the possession and 
exercise of equal and common, personal, civil, and political privi- 
leges, should be inspired with content and supplied with equal 
motives for the cultivation and practice of personal and civic virtues. 
In the midst of their vassalage my race had still preserved in full 
force and vigor their original love of liberty; and despite the em- 
barrassment of their conditions they had felt the ennobling influ- 
ences of the Christian civilization that surrounded them. Cast 
down but not destroyed ; disciplined by the painful ordeal through 
which they had passed ; apt to learn and prompt to appreciate the 
ennobling ideas of American institutions, they were in a large meas- 
ure prepared to enter upon the new life presented to them. 

On the other hand the American people — with institutions estab- 
lished, yet elastic; a public sentiment whose catholicity was rein- 
forced by the sturdiest conservatism — the nation, possessing, in a 
remarkable measure, the maturity of age without its weakness and 
the vigor of youth without its ignorance, were prepared to initiate 
and, in his judgment, to perfect this great philanthropic movement, 
which looked not only to the elevation of a race but the reconstruc- 
tion of a great country. 

He knew that more than a hundred thousand negro soldiers had 
ventured life to maintain the authority of the Government and the 
integrity of the soil of the Republic; and it seemed appropriate and 
just that the nation, emerging from a supreme effort for its own 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 57 

preservation and elevated by its grand success, should requite these 
services, and realize the popular aspirations for universal liberty and 
equality by a commensurate liberalization of the laws and institu- 
tions of the country. 

He believed the negro would be equal to the responsibility of his 
new life and meet, in reasonable and creditable measure, the de- 
mands that it made upon him; and he believed also that the insti- 
tutions of the country were strong enough to bear with safety the 
strain that this new venture might make upon them, and that the 
unavoidable mistakes in government, arising from the enforced 
ignorance of the new citizen, w^ould suggest their own corrective, 
and that the Republic meanwhile would both live and prosper. 
The sober judgments of Senator Morton embraced all this and 
more. And standing on this high and philanthropic plane of 
thought he resolutely contributed to put into organic form those 
constitutional provisions that specifically protect the rights of five 
million American citizens, and to enact and enforce equally and 
alike the statutes that rendered these provisions operative and the 
rights thereunder practically enjoyable. Through him and his peers 
the grand declaration of human equality made by Jefferson in 1776, 
and for nearly a century a glittering abstraction, has become a part 
of the fundamental law of the land. 

For the great ability and integrity that Oliver P. Morton ex- 
hibited in his public life he is entitled to the admiration and respect 
of his countrymen ; and for the fidelity and patience with which he 
labored for the elevation and protection of the negroes of the South 
he will receive their heartfelt gratitude and reverent love. 



58 ADDEESS OF ME. VOOEHEES ON THE 



Address by Mr. VOORHEES, of Indiana. 

Mr. Peesident, the proprieties of this sad occasion and the 
usages of this body do not permit me to remain silent. We are 
paying the last tribute of respect to one who was long a Senator 
from Indiana, and whose name will be forever associated with 
her history. We are saying the last few words over the grave of 
one who played a bold and leading part here, and identified him- 
self with every prominent measure in national affairs for the past 
ten years. 

I knew Olivee P. Moeton from my first entrance upon the 
duties of manhood. We met at the beginning of our acquaintance 
both as personal and political friends, and although we afterward 
became as widely separated as the poles of the earth in our views 
of public affairs, yet our personal relations were never disturbed. 
There were periods of great excitement in our State when we met 
but seldom, but when we did it was always with civility and 
courtesy. 

Senator Moeton was without doubt a very remarkable man. 
His force of character cannot be over estimated. His will-power 
was simply tremendous. He threw himself into all his undertak- 
ings with that fixedness of purpose and disregard of obstacles which 
are always the best guarantees of success. This was true of him 
whether engaged in a lawsuit, organizing troops during the war, 
conducting a political campaign or a debate in the Senate. The 
same daring, aggressive policy characterized his conduct everywhere. 
He made warm, devoted friends and bitter enemies. His followers 
were intense in their support and admiration, and his enemies 
were often unrelenting and unsparing. It is always so with such 
a nature as his. Small men of neutral temperaments escape the 



conflicts of life through which the strong, bold man passes to fame 

and power. 

The motives which actuated Senator Morton in his public 
conduct are not now open to discussion. I shall ask the same 
charity for mine when I am gone that I extend to his. That he 
was sincere in his convictions no one will ever question. That 
the general tenor of his convictions upon the relations between the 
North and the South was erroneous, I think history will fully 
establish. 

Senator Morton's life contains one great lesson to young men 
commencing a career of honorable ambition. He entered upon the 
ordeal of life with nothing on which to rely but his own intellect 
and his indomitable will. The position from which he started to 
achieve all his success was humble and unpromising. It is hard 
to recall any other American whose career better proves that 
industry and talents will overcome all thmgs than his. He be- 
came a power in the land. He was a party leader second to none 
in our history. If he could not be President himself, he did much 
to make others so, and to dictate their policies. And now that he 
is gone a large portion of the American people regard his loss as 
irreparable. 

Sir, Oliver P. Morton is no more, and in his death there is a 
solemn lesson to us. How small and insignificant appear all the 
asperities, the heart-burnings, and personal alienations of the hour 
when we measure them by the side of our responsibilities in that 
world to which he has gone! We are as evanescent and fleeting 
here as the insect tribes of the air. Over the river, "in the land to 
which we are drifting," there is life forever. Let us so use the little 
maro-in we have on the shores of time that eternity will open as a 
joy and not as a terror on our liberated spirits. And may those we 



60 ADDEESS OF ME. VOOEHEES. 

leave behind us do for our memories what we now do for the 
memory of Olivee P. Moeton. 

I move the adoption of the resolutions. 

The resolutions were agreed to unanimously ; and (at three o'clock 
and nine minutes p. m.) the Senate adjourned. 



ADDEESSES 



DEATH OF OLIVER P. MORTON, 



DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 

Friday, January 18, 1878. 

The SPEAKER. The gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hanna] 
rises to call up the resolutions of the Senate touching the death of 
Hon. O. P. Morton, late a Senator from Indiana. 

The Clerk will read the resolutions. 

The resolutions were read, as follows : 

In the Senate of the United States, 

January 17, 1S7S. 

Resolved, That from an earnest desire to show every mark of respect to the mem- 
ory of Hon Oliver P. Morton, late a Senator of the United States from the State of 
Indiana, and to manifest the high estimate entertained of his eminent public ser- 
vices his distinguished patriotism, and his usefulness as a citizen, the business of 
the Senate be now suspended, that the friends and associates of the deceased Senator 
may pay fitting tribute to his public and private virtues. 

Resolved, That a wide-spread and public sorrow on the announcement of his 
death attested the profound sense of the loss which the whole country has sus- 
tained. 

Resolved, That, as a mark of respect for the memory of Mr. Morton, the mem- 
bers of the Senate will go into mourning by wearing crape upon the left arm for 
thirty days. 

Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate communicate these resolutions to the 
House of Representatives. 



62 ADDRESS OF MR. HANNA ON THE 



Address of Mr. Hanna, of Indiana. 

Mr. Speaker : The death of Oliver P. Morton was a national 
bereavement. It is therefore eminently just that the record of that 
department of the Government in which he served with such signal 
ability should bear some testimonial of his illustrious character and 
worth. Although his career was brief, yet few men have acted a more 
prominent part or commanded so large a share of public thought. 
For fifteen years the name of Oliver P. Morton has been known 
in every household of the nation, known by reason of the fact that 
he was endowed with those extraordinary qualities of character 
which made him a great leader among the greatest men of his time. 
We may perhaps with profit glance at some of the marked char- 
acteristics of the man for whose memory the representatives of the 
people dedicate this hour. 

Although prior to the election of Abraham Lincoln he was recog- 
nized in Indiana as a man of commanding ability, yet it was as 
governor of that State he became a national character. He was 
equal to every emergency, surmounted every obstacle, never faltered 
in the face of danger, and with sleepless vigilance anticipated the 
attack of political or national foe. His giant intellect grasped every 
difficulty and promptly suggested remedies which inspired confi- 
dence in the true and discomfited the faithless. When the Legisla- 
ture of his State failed to make provision by law to pay the ex- 
penses of the State government, preserve her credit, and care for the 
helpless and unfortunate blind, dumb, and insane, he did not quail 
in the presence of the perfidy for an instant, but boldly pledged his 
personal honor that the money should be repaid, and it was promptly 
loaned him. When the Government was sorely in need of muni- 
tions of war for national defense he said to the Executive, "Advance 



me sufficient means to start and I wiU, in obedience to the over- 
shadowing necessity of the hour, without authority of law, establish 
my own board of finance, organize an arsenal in which shall be 
promptly manufactured that which is vital to the success of our 
arms ;" and it was done at his bidding. His executive ability was 
the admiration of every patriot. The facility with which he organ- 
ized, armed, and equipped the soldiery of his Stat« stamped him as 
no ordinary man. He did not forget the brave men when they had 
crossed the border, but followed them to the tented field, the hos- 
pital, the scene of conflict, and by his presence said to them "I have 
a heart in sympathy with you." The governors of sister States 
availed themselves of his wise and patriotic counsel, and the Execu- 
tive of the nation gave heed to his suggestions. Although some- 
times impatient, he never expressed a doubt of ultimate success. 
His record during that unhappy conflict is as imperishable as the 
love of free institutions. 

His intellectual power was of the highest order. In that regard 
no man has so nearly approached the full measure of the "great 
expounder of the Constitution," Daniel Webster. In debate, by 
reason of his almost superhuman intellect, he was invincible. The 
simplicity, clearness, and compactness with which he presented every 
proposition ; his power of analysis, which exposed sophistry or false- 
hood, and the ever prevailing earnestness of manner, born of con- 
scious power, enabled him in the discussion of great constitutional 
questions to reach, instruct, and convince the common understand- 
ing as easily as if presenting matters of less moment involving mere 
pa'^ty policy. Impartial history will accord him the foremost de- 
bater of his time. In party warfare, as in defense of the Union, 
his blows were those of a Hercules, never aimless, but with crush- 
ino- force upon the forefront of opposition. Oft and again has his 



adversary reeled, staggered, and fallen upon the field of conflict. 
Clay, with his dashing chivalry and electric appeal, inspired the 
whig as if a divinity ; Morton, cool, self-reliant, majestic, hurled 
at his opponent his unanswerable logic with the resistless force and 
power of a thunderbolt from Jove. In party politics he was bold, 
aggressive, and untiring. He recognized the efiiciency and power 
of organization, and hence his cohorts were ever disciplined and 
ready for the charge. As a leader he was without an equal in 
modern times. 

By some he has been characterized as the apostle of hate. Time 
will prove that he did not hate the people of any section. When 
falsehood and prejudice shall have yielded to truth and reason their 
rightful supremacy, the historic pen will do him full justice. The 
preservation of the Union in the interest of liberty and humanity 
was with him a conviction of duty so intense that no earthly power 
ever presented obstacles which he deemed insurmountable. "We 
are one people, one nation, undivided and indivisible/' was his 
answer to secession, and the sentiment he thus uttered became the 
battle-cry of every patriot in the land. To him more than any other 
man since Washington are we indebted for the extinguishment of 
the heresy — a heresy which has cost so much blood and treasure — 
that we are simply a confederation of States, bound only by a rope 
of sand ; and to him are we in like manner indebted for the recog- 
nition of the fundamental, national idea, that our allegiance to the 
Union is paramount to that of the State, that the title of "American " 
is superior to that of "Indianian." He was equally devoted to 
securing beyond all question for the weak and humble the inalien- 
able rights of man, and hence was not content until these rights 
were firmly imbedded in the Constitution by the adoption of the 
several amendments. His wisdom and statesmanship in that regard 



LIFE AND CHAEACTEK OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 65 

have been sanctioned by the national utterance of all parties. God 
forbid that any man should object that the humble, the lowly, and 
the long-enslaved should bedew his bier or water the flowers that in 
coming years shall bloom over his grave with their tears of grateful 
remembrance. It is the holiest oifering that mortal can offer in 
recognition of a beneficent deed. I repeat, he did not hate the peo- 
ple of any section. 

His untiring and incessant labor in behalf of the Union and to 
secure the equal rights of every citizen under the Constitution and 
laws has by some been made the pretext for such charge. To all 
such I offer no apology for his conduct. The wisdom of his action 
has been justified by a preserved nationality. I grant you he was 
a partisan, but his partisan zeal was ever subservient to the best 
interests of the nation. He never spoke for party. State, or section 
as against the Union. He never counseled blotting out a single star 
that glitters upon the American flag. He was never a party to any 
scheme of national dishonor. He was the bold champion of free 
labor at a time when that struggling cause was denied unfettered 
utterance. As the friend of man he gave attentive ear to the whis- 
perings of the spirit of progress. He clung to the Constitution and 
the Union as the sheet-anchor of hope for the welfare of unborn 
millions. In him the people had an advocate equal to every emer- 
gency in which their dearest interests were involved. Had you 
been with me at the capital of my native State on the 6th of No- 
vember last and beheld more than fifty thousand strong men, of 
every shade of political opinion and of every pursuit in life and 
from every section, who on that inclement day stood along the 
streets for miles, with bowed heads and solenm mien, while the 
mortal remains of the great man they honored, respected, and loved 
were borne to their last resting-place on earth, you would not dare 



66 ADDRESS OF MR. HANNA ON THE 

lisp the charge that Oliver P. Morton, when living, was in- 
spired with the spirit of hate. That he had political enemies I 
grant. No public man deserves a place in history who has not. 
The smile of Judas Iscariot never played upon his manly face. HLs 
adherence to personal friends sometimes invoked severe criticism, 
for he was slow to abandon any man in whom he had once reposed 
confidence. His personal integrity, like the virtue which Caesar 
demanded for his wife, was above suspicion. 

An ill-gotten dollar, in either public or private life, never soiled 
the palm of his hand. His soul was never blackened with official 
corruption. Investigating committees encountered no oifensive 
stench arising from the record of his accounts with either State or 
National Government, although he was intrusted with millions with- 
out surety save his individual honor. Few men of any age were 
ever endowed with such force of will. From boyhood to death it 
was a marked characteristic. What he resolved to do, as a rule 
was accomplished. Although for years afflicted beyond the power 
of words to express, he willed to labor beyond the measure of per- 
fect strength. By sheer force of will he kept at bay the grim mon- 
ster and seemingly bid him defiance. His will-power carried him 
in the discharge of official duty wherever and whenever his country 
demanded. I grant he was ambitious. God pity the boy or man 
who is not. Like Webster and Clay he aspired to the Presidency, 
and, like them, he did not aspire beyond his merit. 

Peerless leader, beloved governor, heroic Unionist, wise coun- 
selor, matchless Senator, affectionate husband, kind father, honest 
man. Citizen and statesman of a great nation, in whose service he 
labored until in the presence of death he exclaimed, "I am worn 
out," his record has passed into history, and the memory of his 
achievements will inspire the American youth to emulate his ex- 



LIFE AND CHAEACTEE OF OLIVER P. MOETON. 67 

ample. Grand type of free institutions ; fit representative of the 
mighty West. Thank God for the preservation of a government 
that bids the poor ambitious orphan boy of the field and shop to 
climb upward to a position higher than that of any crowned head of 
earth, the American Senate. May we indulge the fond hope that 
his immortal spirit peacefully rests in the realm of eternal bliss. 
Indiana keenly feels the loss of her distinguished son, and as chief 
mourner in the midst of her sorrowing sisters she utters at the grave 
of her dead a silent, fervent prayer that the God of our fathers may 
preserve and bless us as "one people, one nation, undivided and 
indivisible." 



Address of Mr. Wilson, of ^A^est Virginia. 

Mr. Speakee, when my name was announced as a member of 
the committee appointed to represent this House at the fimeral of 
the late Senator Moeton, my first impulse was to decline the ap- 
pointment, in order that some gentleman whose opinions had been 
more in accord with those of Mr. Moeton than had my own might 
perform that office in my place ; but, reflecting that a solemn duty 
had been imposed on me, which I was not at liberty to decline with- 
out cause, and remembering, too, that during the last Congress I 
was prevented by ill health from serving upon a similar committee 
chosen to pay the last tribute of respect to West Virginia's late dis- 
tinguished son, Senator Caperton, I yielded my personal preference 
and performed the duty assigned to me. 

And now, Mr. Speaker, I am gratified that I did so ; am grati- 
fied that I was placed in a position to hear and see things that gave 
me a better opinion than I had theretofore entertained of him whose 
memory this House and the country mourn to-day. 



68 ADDEESS OP MR. WILSON ON THE 

The frailty of our nature when aroused by the passions of the 
hour too often prompts us to withhold from our opponents while 
living the respect we cherish for their memories when they are no 
more, and so it was in the life and death of Senator Morton. His 
career had been so prominent and so closely allied to the legislation 
which operated harshly upon the Southern States that he was re- 
garded by those holding opposing views as an extreme partisan. 

But there is another criterion by which to weigh the character of 
the man and the statesman. It is the estimate placed upon him by 
his neighbors, by those who see him most and know him best. Tiied 
by this test Oliver P. Morton was a better man, more of a man, 
than his public conduct would indicate. On the day of his burial, 
in the beautiful city of his home, there was to be seen an immense 
funeral pageant; flags floated at half-mast almost everywhere ; pub- 
lic buildings and private residences were draped in mourning; a 
throng of fifty thousand sorrow-stricken people had assembled from 
various parts of his own State and from other States to be present 
at the last sad rites. Democrats and republicans, white and black 
men, ladies and little children, vied with each other in doing him 
honor. No man, Mr. Speaker, could be thus mourned and buried 
who had not possessed good qualities of both head and heart. 

He entered at an early age upon the stormy sea of politics, and 
rapidly advanced to the front rank as an orator and leader in the 
perilous times of sectional strife and revolution. The crowning 
period of his life was during the late war, when he acted in a civico- 
military capacity as governor of Indiana. He soon became the 
most distinguished governor on the continent, winning for himself 
the reputation of being the great war governor of America. 

When the policy of the Government was not well defined in the 
prosecution of the war, and even the then Executive seemed to be 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 69 

wavering, Governor Morton delivered upon that subject, at the 
capital of his State, a speech which fell like a flash of lightning into 
the gloom. His positive counsel was speedily followed up by ener- 
getic action, and he surpassed all other men in zeal and efficiency in 
the prosecution of the war; was foremost and fiercest in the effort 
to overthrow the rebellion. Apparently losing sight of everything 
else, to this one idea he devoted the wonderful powers of his mind 
and the best days of his life. It was the dream of his existence, 
which he followed — 

With an eye that never sleeps, 
And a wing that never tires. 

His political opinions were strong and extreme, and were pressed 
by him without regard to opposition. This characteristic led many 
to consider him cold, and even harsh and bitter, in liis feelings 
toward his opponents; but those more familiar with his life claim 
that his intercourse with his fellow men was kind and coiu'teous, 
and that his devotion to his family was the strongest and most 
beautiful manifestation of his character. 

The future historian will ascribe to him inconsistency upon 
currency, negro suffrage, and perhaps other questions of principle 
and policy. 

From the time he entered upon his legislative career he con- 
tributed largely to the policy pursued by the Government toward 
the Southern States; yet upon the adoption of President Hayes's 
southern policy he yielded his opposition and acquiesced in it; 
and, if living to-day, it is fair to infer that, far from confederating 
to strike down the arm of the Administration, he would be found 
zealously upholding it. 

However much he was distinguished for his varied services as 
governor of his native State, there was reserved for him another 
theater of action where his great ability was to give him a position 



70 ADDRESS OF MR. BROWN ON THE 

of commanding influence — the Senate of the United States. He 
was not equal in comprehensive statesmanship to Clay, Webster, or 
Calhoun, but as a party leader he excelled them all ; and he took 
his high rank in that august body without having had previous 
experience as a legislator. 

Some men become great through the gift of peculiar talent, 
others achieve greatness by force of will and energy of character. 
Mr. Morton, before he entered the Senate, was stricken down by 
paralysis, and though a hopeless cripple for the rest of his life his 
force of will and energy of character raised him up and pressed 
him forward. He scorned paralysis with the same determination 
with which he scorned all other dangers and obstacles; dragged his 
lialf-dead body to his seat in yonder hall, and for ten years of 
unrelaxing labor, unwincing boldness, and unmurmurmg patience 
struggled with great men and great measures, winning success and 
prominence that seldom fall to the lot of any one man. 

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the wide differences 
of opinion that existed between Senator Morton and the majority 
of the members of this House, we can, as Americans, all point 
with pride to the fact that no charge of corruption tarnishes his 
name. 

Address of Mr. Brown, of Indiana. 

Representing the birthplace and the old home of Oliver P. 
Morton, it is fit I should say a word on this sad occasion. I shall 
attempt no eulogy. Panegyic may gratify the living, but the ear 
of him who was for a quarter of a century my personal and polit- 
ical friend is deaf alike to censure or to praise. Calumny can no 
more wound him, and in the presence of the new-made grave 
malice stands mute. Rivalries and resentments are now extin- 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 71 

guished, and friend and adversary alike lay their garlands on the 
coffin of the dead statesman. It is creditable to our poor weak 
nature that when one who has antagonized us joins 

The innumerable caravan which moves 

To that mysterious realm where each shall take 

His chamber in the silent halls of death, 

we are ready to review his life in a spirit of fairness and candor, 
approving the good, and with a generous charity covering the ill 
out of sight. Those who have been in public life especially know 
that to escape censure one must live a whole life-time without com- 
mitting a mistake or doing or saying an ill or an unwise thing. 
We realize, too, that when death casts its shadow upon our souls, 
poor and insignificant will be the story of our goodness and great- 
ness; that when the life struggle is over, and, worn out, we pass 
into the darkness of the night of death, all there will be left of us 
will be the example of our lives and the influence of our actions 
and opinions. "Every human life is a lesson, — it may be an 
example, but always a lesson." And it is appropriate, therefore, 
that on an occasion like the present we repeat the history and the 
lesson of the life that is gone, that it may live in what it has 
achieved worthy the respect or gratitude of mankind. 

Like most distinguished men of the Republic — of those who 
have taken conspicuous positions in professional or political Ufe — 
Oliver P. Morton was a self-made man, the architect and arbiter 
of his own fortune. To the accident of birth or fortune, family 
influence or patronage, he owed nothing whatever. His only pat- 
rimony was orphanage, and he wrought his great career by his own 
genius. 

He came from a sturdy English stock, an ancestry possessing that 
stubborn tenacity of purpose, that unyielding will peculiar to that 
people. From this ancestry he doubtless inherited that character- 



72 ADDRESS OF MR. BROWN ON THE 

istic courage and perseverance so prominent in his public life, for 
"the source of genius is ofttimes in ancestry and the blood of 
descent is the prophecy of destiny." His parents were natives of 
New Jersey, but at an early day they moved West and made their 
home in the then young but growing State of Indiana — a State to 
which they were destined to give the proudest name in its history, 
a son who was to stand above all others of his time as a states- 
man and political leader. At an early age he was left an orphan. 
The yeai*s of his boyhood were passed at the seminary of his native 
village, at the Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and in learning 
the trade of a hatter. "Ambition, that germ from which all 
growth of true nobleness proceeds," inspired him to seek fields of 
broader usefulness than were to be found in a hatter's shop, and in 
the year 1843, at the age of twenty, he entered upon the study of 
law. His venerable preceptor, Hon. John S. Newman, thus wrote 
me a few weeks ago : 

Senator Morton came into my office at Centreville thirty-four years ago, at the 
age of twenty. As a student he was industrious and thoughtful, anxious at all times 
to accomplish everything he undertook. In discussing questions that arose in his 
reading he exhibited a quickness of comprehension and a clearness in statement 
that gave promise of that success in his chosen profession which he afterward 
secured. 

His professional career covered the fourteen years from 1843 to 
1861, when, being elevated to the office of governor, he left the bar 
and returned to it no more. When he retired from the profession 
he stood well advanced toward its front. He did not reach profes- 
sional eminence at a single bound, did not win distinction in some 
first cause by the brilliancy of his genius or the fervor of his 
eloquence, but by perseverance and pluck he went steadily forward 
and upward, never halting and never going back, until he became 
the acknowledged leader of the bar of Eastern Indiana — a bar num- 
bering among its members such men as Caleb B. Smith, Samuel W. 



LIFE AND CHAEACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 73 

Parker, James Rariden, Jehu T. Elliott, Charles H. Test, and John 
S. Newman. 

In 1855 it was my fortune to go on the circuit as prosecuting attor- 
ney, and during the five succeeding years, the last and most active 
years of his professional life, I had frequent opportunities of witness- 
ing his management of causes in court. He presented a legal ques- 
tion with great force and clearness. With a mind at once robust 
and critical, he was able to grasp the whole scope of his subject, to 
fathom its profoundest depths and master its minutest details. With 
a quickness that was notable he seized upon the strong point in his 
case and centered upon it every power of his mind, fortified it with 
facts, intrenched it behind precedents, environed it about with illus- 
trations, until his position seemed impregnable. While he chose 
with unerring certainty the strong point in his own cause, with 
equal readiness and accuracy he discovered the weak one in that of 
his adversary. No man was better versed in the art of putting facts 
to the court or jury. He brought with a singular skill the favorable 
points of liis client's case in prominence, and exhibited a like dex- 
terity and acuteness in suppressing that which was prejudicial to his 
interests. He readily detected a sophistry, and would break it into 
fragments as the "spray is broken upon the rocks." Without any 
eloquence other than the "talent of giving force to reason," he was 
a most successful and formidable jury-lawyer. He had a keen in- 
sight into human nature and possessed an extraordinary influence 
over men. With a dominion that was absolute he seized upon the 
sympathy of the jury and poured the resistless tide of his own earnest 
emotions and convictions into their hearts. In the trial of a cause 
he never lost faith, but worked resolutely on to the end with an 
unflagging confidence in his ability to win, and he seldom lost 
the verdict. His was indeed a "Roman courage, that plucked 



10 



74 ADDRESS OF MR. BROWN ON THE 

success from rugged danger and snatched victory from the jaws of 
defeat." 

The bar is said to be the nursery of American politics, the school 
in which the young men of the Republic prepare themselves for pub- 
lic employments. It provides an opportunity for talent, and in pop- 
ular governments there is always a place and a mission for a man of 
ability, and intellect and merit will sooner or later force their pos- 
sessor to the front. 

Oliver P. Morton was trained in this school, and at the early 
age of thirty-three passed from it and unchallenged assumed the 
leadership of the republican party of Indiana. In May, 1856, he 
was unanimously nominated by that party as its candidate for gov- 
ernor in that, its first contest for political supremacy. Until the 
abrogation of the Missouri compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska 
legislation he had been in politics a democrat, but his convictions on 
the subject of slavery would not permit him to act with that party 
longer. In this memorable campaign his opponent was the lamented 
and gifted Ashbel P. Willard. Never were two more able but dis- 
similar men pitted against each other in the arena of public debate. 
The one was eloquent, copious, imaginative, and ornate; the other 
earnest, epigrammatic, and severely logical; the one gave to elo- 
quence the graces of poetry ; the other clothed it in the garb of match- 
less reason. Willard culled the language and tied the words into 
beautiful bouquets to dazzle and captivate, while his young competi- 
tor. O'Connell-like, " flung a brood of robust thoughts upon the world 
without a rag to cover them . ' ' After a long and spirited canvass Gov- 
ernor Willard was elected by a largely reduced maj ority . Four years 
afterward Mr. Morton was elected lieutenant-governor, and in the 
following January, Henry S. Lane having been elected to the Senate 
of the United States, he was inaugurated governor of Indiana. 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 75 

His executive career was cast in an era of unparalleled dangers 
and difficulties, beginning at a time when the slaveholding States 
were resolving themselves out of the National Union, after the 
Montgomery Congress had assembled, and when civil war seemed 
inevitable. In the very first moment of his official life he stood at 
the threshold of the most extraordinary epoch in the history of the 
nation, an epoch destined to bring out his immense executive and 
administrative ability. The revolution into which he was thrust so 
suddenly created an opportunity in which he was permitted to be 
both the hero of a principle and an occasion. In that stupendous 
crisis every public man was expected to act and to act promptly and 
decisively. What a great work was now before him ! In that day 
of gloom, of blood, of tears, and of peril to the Republic, he did 
not stand 

With folded arms and bated breath, irresolute, 

but met so courageously the trying responsibilities of his office, so 
ably and faithfully discharged every duty due his Government and 
people, that he speedily became one of the marked characters in this 
era, so crowded with illustrious names. Of the Union people of 
his State he was at once the recognized leader and oracle. From 
the beginning he was an undisguised coercionist. He believed that 
to parley with treason was to become its accomplice ; that the nation 
could not hesitate to strike when the wager of battle was tendered 
without hazarding its existence and justly meriting the contempt of 
mankind. 

In October, 1860, in a public address, he stated his position. 

Said he — 

Shall we surrender the nation without a struggle and let the Union go with merely 
a few hard words? If it was worth a bloody struggle to establish this nation, it is 
worth one to preserve it, and I trust we shall not, by surrendering with indecent 
haste, publish to the world that the inheritance our fathers purchased with their 
blood was given up to save ours. 



76 ADDRESS OF MR. BROWN ON THE 



Again he said : 

What is coercion but the enforcement of the law? Is anything else intended or 
required? Secession or nullification can only be regarded by the General Govern- 
ment as individual action upon individual responsibility. Those concerned in it 
cannot intrench themselves behind the forms of the State government so as to give 
their conduct the semblance of legality, and thus devolve the responsibility upon 
the State government, which of itself is irresponsible. The Constitution and laws 
of the United States operate upon individuals, but not upon States, and precisely as 
if there were no States. In this matter the President has no discretion. He has 
taken a solemn oath to enforce the laws and preserve order, and to this end he has 
been made Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy. How can he be absolved 
from responsibility thus devolved upon him by the Constitution and his official oath ? 

From these positions he never retreated and in their maintenance 
he never faltered. 

When the war cloud burst in thunders over our people and our 
fields were drenched in blood, he proved himself equal to the occa- 
sion. He grasped the dreadful events of the time with an iron 
resolution and a stern hand; he hesitated in the presence of no 
danger; no peril overtook him unprepared, and his resources were 
as boundless as the necessity that required them. 

A petty hand 
Can steer a ship becalmed, but he that will 
Govern and carry her to ends, must know 
His tides, his currents, how to shift his sails, 
What she will bear in foul, what in fair weathers. 
Where her springs are, her leaks and how to stop them. 
What strands, what shelves, what rocks do threaten her. 

He who would pilot a State safely when rocked upon the rough 
sea of devastating war should have steady nerves, a clear head, be 
capable of carrying her to her ends in spite of tempests and false 
lights on the shore, of understanding the channels of human thought, 
sympathy, and action, of molding public opinion and setting the 
tides and currents of all these steadfastly against the dangers that 
imperil her. 

Governor Morton, by the judicious management of his State, 
which at the beginning of the rebellion was in serious danger from 
a divided public sentiment, showed himself possessed of such 
qualities in an unusual degree. 



LIFE AND CHAEACIER OP OLIVER P. MOETON. 



77 



To the cause of the Union throughout that protracted struggle he 
consecrated every energy and impulse of his nature, suffering no dis- 
aster to appal, no defeat to discourage him; but in every vicissitude 
of tliat memorable conflict he had an abiding faith in the ultinrate 
success of the national cause. To him the war was a contest m 
which slavery was measuring swords with free representaUve gov- 
ernment, and he believed the victory of the insurgents would be the 
doom of the Eepublic. 

Durinc. the war his labors were simply Herculean. No call was 
made upo^n his gallant State but that was responded to with alacrity. 
Under his administration more than two hundred thousand troops 
were mustered and sent to the Held ; nineteen thousand oiBcers put 
in commission ; arms, clothmg, camps, and camp equipage supplied ; 
soldiers' homeserectcd,sanitarycommissionsand soldiers payagencies 

o^ized. He personally supervised every detail of this nnmense 
work. He anticipated and supplied every want of the Indiana sol- 
dier He kept himself informed of the location of every regiment, 
and" wherever an Indianian followed the fl^ or pitched his tent, 
whether on the Potomac or the Mississippi, under the P"«^ °f ^^ 
Carolinas or on the prairies of the Southwest, he w^ the objec of 
his eare. Ere the smoke was lifted from the battle-fields his volunteer 
surgeons and nui^, with medicines and sanitary stores for the sick 
and wounded, were at hand. By this unceasing watchfulness, this 
tender solicitude for the volunteer, he proved himself worthy of the 
name of " the soldier's friend." 

In his admmistration of the civil affairs of the State he met and sur- 
mounted difficulties of the most perplexing nature. Here agam he 
showed his superior eKecutive ability. When a hostile Legislature 
adjourned without appropriating money with which to carry on the 
St^te govermnent, he borrowed $2,000,000 on his personal assurance 



78 ADDRESS OF ME. BROWN ON THE 

of payment, provided for the prisons, the asylums, kept for two years 
the whole civil machinery in motion without a clog or a jar, and 
saved the honor of the State by the prompt payment of the interest 
on its debt. 

Twice was he elected by the unanimous vote of his party to the 
Senate of the United States. He entered the Senate at a time when 
Congress had to deal with the difficult and delicate subject of recon- 
structing the seceding States. In this important and exciting con- 
troversy he took a prominent part. Of his position in the Senate it 
is enough to say that in that most exciting tribunal he was accorded 
a foremost place. By some, perhaps by many, his views upon the 
subject of reconstruction were thought extreme; but it was a time 
when even conservatism was extreme, when all opinions and sentiments 
were an enthusiasm. This is not a fit time to approve or condemn 
his opinions or his policy. We were too much actors and partizans 
in that controversy and we stand too near that day of bitterness to 
pass impartial judgment on its statesmen or their measures. In some 
future day, when the men of this era shall have passed away and 
their legislation and their ideas shall have been tested by years of 
national experience, it will be a proper time to praise or censure 
them. Posterity will review their work and pass upon it fairly; 
we cannot. 

His love for the Union was an absorbing passion, and it gave color 
and direction to every thought and act of his public life. He be- 
lieved the revolt of the South a crime, and that — 

Universal amnesty would remove the last mark of legal disapprobation of that 
crime; that it would be a declaration to posterity that there was nothing wrong in 
the rebellion; that it involved no criminality; that it was an honest difference of 
opinion between parties, without crime on either side. 

Upon this question he did not leave his opinion to conjecture. In 
his place in the Senate he said : 



LIFE AXD CHARACTER OP OLIVER P. MORTON. 79 



It should be definitely established as a principle in our Constitution, both by 
judicial decision and example of punishment, that rebellion is treason, that treason 
is a crime whicli may not be committed with impunity. 

He earnestly desired peace, a sincere and lasting peace, a restored 
Union, the re-establishment of cordial and kindly relations between 
the lately hostile sections, but was inflexibly opposed to a truce tink- 
ered up by the adoption of what he conceived to be temporary and 
doubtful expedients. When peace came he meant it should be an 
abiding peace, one acknowledging the supremacy of the Constitution 
and the law and respecting and securing to the humblest every right 
of American citizenship. The sovereignty of right over force, of 
intelligence over prejudice, of the people over governments, was a 
cardinal point in his political creed, and he upheld it with the zeal 
of an apostle. To the amendments, to every advance movement of 
his party, he gave his unqualified support, and in his philosophy no 
system of government was republican that was not at once a charter 
of human rights and a gospel of political equality. 

As a party man he was extreme, ofttimes bitter, assailing parties 
and measures with unusual asperity. To him politics meant war, 
and in the heat of the campaign he neither asked nor gave quarter. 
In these exasperating party struggles he was aggressive, assaulting 
his adversaries with much acrimony, regardless of the wounds he 
might inflict or the retribution he might provoke. Naturally he 
was a generous and chivalrous man. His political convictions, how- 
ever, were fashioned in the midst of desperate, lawless war, when 
there were beating of drums and mustering of armed men, when 
thousands of his friends and neighbors were going down before the 
iron tempest of shot and shell. He should be judged by the times 
in which he lived. 

Poets say that the clouds assume the form of the countries over which they have 
passed, and, molding themselves upon the valleys, plains, or mountains, acquire 
their shapes, and move with them over the skies. 



80 ADDEESS OF ME. BEOWN ON THE 

So it is with the human mind : it models itself upon the epoch in 
which it lives and puts itself in sympathy with the impulses and 
passions of the times. The lessons of war are always stern, and they 
temper the manners, morals, and politics of the people. Love, 
charity, the tenderer instincts of our nature are speechless in the 
presence of its desolation. It is natural that the man should gather 
inspiration from the events in which he plays a leading part, and 
that he should become, to a large extent, the impersonation of the 
period in which he lives and acts. 

As a political leader, an organizer of parties and campaigns, he 
was unsurpassed. His party accepted his leadership unquestioned, 
and with confidence that he would win success if victory were pos- 
sible. He was an indefatigable worker. Although partially para- 
lyzed and unable to walk without difficulty, he took charge of the 
canvass and visited and spoke in every section of his State. Unable 
to stand on the platform he sat on his chair, often in the open air, 
and spoke so as to reach the uttermost limits of the vast crowds that 
assembled to hear him. Although not " fluent like Cicero, nor like 
Burke magnificent," he was a captivating speaker, and the people 
pressed close about him until he uttered his last word. In his ad- 
dresses he reached the reason of the multitude and often aroused an 
intense enthusiasm. 

I have seen 
The dumb men throng to see him, and the blind 
To hear him speak : The matrons flung their gloves, 
Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchiefs, 
Upon him as he passed. 



He— 



Did pluck allegiance from men's hearts. 
Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths. 



As a public speaker he was clear, distinct, and intense, but never 
tore "a passion to tatters." He made his words the servants of his 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 81 

thoughts and subordinated style to matter. He was seldom hu- 
morous, and never coarse. His language was correct, but he em- 
bellished his sentences with none of the charms of classical literature 
or the beauties of poetry, and never decked a sophistry in specious 
colors simply to charm or allure. Without great learning, his re- 
serve of common sense supplied ample sources of argument, and his 
severe logic always secured attention, and even challenged the re- 
spect of those who differed most widely from him in opinion. His 
manner was easy, natural, and wholly without ostentation. In ar- 
rangement he was not always methodical, but his argument was 
given in unadorned Saxon and with a perspicuity that made it com- 
prehensible to the most uncultivated mind. He was essentially a 
strong man, and there was at all times and upon all occasions an im- 
posing vigor and compactness in his language and his logic that 
kept alive the interest of his auditory. He was only eloquent in his 
ability to " beat down the argument of his adversary and to put a 
better one in its place." 

If to abandon a position found to be unsupported by facts, faulty 
in logic, or rendered untenable by the alterations of time or condi- 
tions, subjects one to the charge of inconsistency. Senator Morton 
was not always consistent. At the first he antagonized the policy 
out of which the fifteenth amendment grew and combated it with 
his characteristic ability, but it is to his credit that he was unwilling 
to cling to an error simply to vindicate his consistency. As unyield- 
ing as he seemed to be in the championship of his opinions, he 
recognized the law of progress and laid under contribution the light 
of advancing knowledge. 

Senator Morton belonged to no church. Only once during our 
long acquaintance did I hear him talk at any length on the subject 
of religion. We were going to a political meeting and he had with 



11 



82 ADDRESS OF MR. BROWN ON THE 

him a copy of Laraartine's Girondists, from which he read me 
the author's account of the deaths of Mirabeau, the tribune, and of 
Verginaud, the philosophic deputy of the Gironde. He spoke of 
Mirabeau's dying words : 

Environ me with music, sprinlde me witli incense, and crown me with flowers, 
tliat I may pass into eternal sleep. 

And then turning to the story of the last night passed by the 
condemned deputies in the old conciergerie he read me the last dis- 
course of Verginaud. Said the condemned man: 

Death is but the greatest act of life, since it gives birth to a higher state of ex- 
istence. Were it not thus there would be something greater than God. It would 
be the just man immolating himself uselessly and hopelessly for his country. This 
supposition is full of blasphemy, and I repel it with contempt and horror. No! 
Verginaud is not greater than God, but God is more just than Verginaud, and will 
not suffer him to ascend the scaffold but to justify him in future ages. 

He then put in contrast the philosophy and faith of these historic 
men — Mirabeau going down into the gloom of the grave without a 
hope beyond and blaspheming the religion and teachings of the Naz- 
arene with his last breath ; Verginaud, in the sight of the guillotine, 
condemned to die at the next sunrise, reproving the skeptical levity 
of his colleagues, and discoursing with an inspired eloquence upon 
immortality, and proclaiming his unfaltering belief that his martyr- 
dom would conduct him through the grave into a higher and hap- 
pier life. Twenty years have rendered indistinct the language of 
Senator Morton on this occasion, and I will not attempt to repeat 
it, but I remember that this reading led to a conversation in which 
he expressed his faith in immortality and the Christian system. He 
seemed not to regard the ceremonial of religion, but believed in a 
religion of feeling, of works, rather than of opinion. A religion of 
love as broad and high as the Infinite, embracing the whole human 
race ; one that discarded the " dry husks of creeds " and planted itself 
upon the broadest philanthropy and tolerance. 



LIFE AND CHAEACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTOX, 



83 



Senator Morton achieved no place or power by bribery, nor did 
he retain any by bargain or intrigue. In private and in public life 
he was an honest man. As governor he expended milHons of the 
public moneys, made numerous and extensive contracts for Army 
supplies, and after a most rigid inquiry into his official conduct not 
a farthing was found to have been misappropriated. One who 
bitterly assailed him living, after his death paid this just tribute to 
the integrity of his official life : 

Livin- in an age of venality, of depravity and bribery, he kept his hands clean. 
With opportunities for enriching himself possessed by few, he contented himself 
with a moderate competency, and illustrated by the simplicity of his habits the 
democracy he once professed. If he had vices, cupidity was not one of them. 

But at last it is in the domestic relation we learn men best. 
Man's domestic life is a sure and unerring index to his heart. To 
know him he must be seen at home, in that mystic circle of wife 
and children; that rallying-place of the affections. At the family 
hearth-stone, where his joys and griefs, his hopes and his aspirations 
are laid bare, we learn his inner nature. One of Senator Morton's 
neighbors, who pronounced his funeral discourse, said of him : 

He was a conspicuous example of tenderness; it passed the bounds of ordinary 
family love as the friendship of Jonathan and David surpassed the ordinary tender- 
ness of men. It was a passion that never died or waned. When burdened with 
such cares and tangled duties as no other governor of his State or any State ever 
carried he still welcomed to his crowded office at all hours his wife and children, 
and ne'ver failed to greet them with kisses. He put away the great cares of State 
to embrace those he loved. 

To his home and family he was devoted, for there children and 

A loving wife beguiled him more 

Than Fame's emblazoned zeal. 
And one sweet note of tenderness 

Tlian Triumph's wildest peal. 

But Oliver P. Morton was weary and has gone to 

Rest in the bosom of God, till the brief sleep 
Of death is over, and a happier life 
Shall dawn to waken his insensible dust. 

All that is mortal of him who for sixteen years was a notable 
figure in the most eventful and heroic era of the Eepublic, who 



84 ADDRESS OF MR. HARDENBERGH ON THE 

enchained the attention of listening multitudes and Senates, and to 
whom a great party looked for counsel and leadership, lies in the 
cemetery near the capital of the State he served so long and well. 
He has joined the pale battalions that have answered the roll-call 
of the great Captain. Near by the grave where he rests lie hun- 
dreds of those who, in answer to his call, went out to the battle- 
fields of the nation and challenged death 

In the fevered swamp and by the black bayou 

and in the din of the fight. Hereafter, when the May-day comes 
and floral offerings are brought to adorn the tombs of these dead 
heroes, his hands will bear no wreath and decorate no grave. He 
will never more pay tribute to their patriotism and courage. 

For his lips are mute, his hands palsied, 
And his eye dark with the mists of death, 

and he has lain down to sleep with them. There we must leave 
him, for 

He was weary, worn with watching. 
His life-crown of power hath pressed. 

Oft on the temples sadly aching- 
He was weary, let him rest ! 

Toll, bells at the capital ; 
Bellsof the land, toll! 

Sob out your grief with brazen lungs; 
Toll! toll! toll! 



Address of Mr. Hardenbergh, of Ne^v Jersey. 

Mr. Speaker, it has been a custom coeval with our Govern- 
ment when a member of the Senate or of the House is called to his 
final rest during the term of his official service that such of those 
who served with him as may be selected by the delegation from his 
own State shall pronounce his eulogy and thus give additional 
solemnity to an occasion which invites us to the most sober of 
reflections. In the varied phases of our American life the spirit of 



LIFE AND CHARACTEE OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 85 

progress pays but little attention to ancestral homes, and but few of 
our families but find themselves linked by kindred with other por- 
tions of our Union, and notably so those of my own State with the 
young empires of the West. 

It is thus of New Jersey I weave to-day a chaplet to the memory 
of the departed Senator, whose immediate family, though long 
since removed from her limits, yet, through many of their kindred, 
adorn her history and still live to give impress to her policy and 
her progress. Death has again spread his sable wing over this 
Capitol, and we stand to-day within its shadow; and the signifi- 
cance of the occasion is that, though a great man has fallen, all are 
equal in that mysterious presence. What is position, honor, glory, 
Avhen the inexorable tyrant treads a monarch down as easily as a 
worm? The Senator now lying so low, and removed so far, was of 
the most distinguished among the public men whose names were 
written upon the roll of our national legislation. 

But yesterday he stood in front of the people, his ear to their 
heart, his voice for their utterance. The cares of the State, of the 
nation, upon his shoulders, he grappled with those high concerns 
which involve the empire of the mind and sought to set the stars 
in their courses which should direct and influence the generation in 
which he lived and for whom he labored. To-day, deaf to the 
applause of friends, the taunts of foes, the sweet voices of love, all 
heedless of his fair renown, insensible to glory. Between that 
yesterday and this to-day is an abyss no line has sounded, and the 
world with all its wisdom knows not what it is. But in that brief 
space the wave of life has come and gone. We saw its rising 
strength, its accumulating volume, its bounding and storm-tossed 
crest. As we gazed it had broken and become lost in the eternal 
sea. We stand upon the shore and seek in vain the refluent waters. 



86 ADDRESS OF MR. IIARDENBERGII ON THE 



There shall be no return. AVe but repeat to-day the dirge which 
ever hath been chanted since time began and will be carried on in 
melancholy cadence until time itself shall end. 

Partisanship is hushed and justice finds a voice in the presence of 
the dead. Such an hour, a momentary interlude in the play of pas- 
sion, here suggests thoughts as to the value of great reputations and 
invokes speculation as to the ultimate influence upon the state of a 
life of so much energy and a career of such distinguished public 
service. 

No stately Parthenon rears its fair and splendid proportions upon 
this Capitol Hill to enshrine in enduring beauty the forms of those 
thought worthy of remembrance by the Republic. No Westminster 
Abbey, with its time-defying monuments reared by a mournful state, 
wins hither the wandering and weary feet of the pilgrims of Liberty 
to the eternal twilight of the dead; but here and there, in quiet 
church-yards all over the land, they are borne amid the tearful ben- 
edictions of a grateful people to rest with their ancestral dust. It 
makes but little difference where lie scattered the bones of the brave 
six hundred of Balaklava while the English tongue continues the 
question "When can their glory fade?" 

Who can determine the influence upon the Republic of that little 
band of the fathers slowly gathered in immortal beauty beneath the 
dome of this imposing edifice? We pass within the charmed circle 
ere we enter this Chamber; but who of us ever stopped a moment 
before them that did not feel the blood leap with bright current 
through his veins? Who ever looked upon the heroic forms of 
Samuel Adams and Ethan Allen ^vithout a prayer and a benediction, 
or upon the chivalric beauty of Baker without a rencAved vow of 
patriotic devotion? These are the silent influences which govern us 
— these the invisible hands which keep alive the vestal fires upon 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 87 

our altare, the unconscious monitors which determine and regulate 
the course and progress of human liberty. 

We care but little where lie buried the fathers of the Republic; 
the earth is their sepulcher, the " wide-arched empire " their mon- 
ument, and every language beneath the sun perpetuates their eulo- 
gies. Its great names are the foundation and pillars of the State; 
their achievements are its strength and their reputation its highest 
glory. Oliver P. Morton for many years has been a conspicuous 
man. Upon his introduction to public life he gave marked evi- 
dences of the possession of those qualities which would insure a 
successful career. He seemed born to be a ruler among men ; with 
a temper and spirit that would not easily brook opposition; with a 
resolute and unflinching power of will ; with unquestionable reliance 
upon his own convictions; with a courage which was undismayed 
by the presence of overwhelming antagonism, he became more defi- 
ant as the elements of resistance were successfully combined. 

Indeed his was a spirit that reveled in the storm. Amid tranquil 
and gentle scenes he would enjoy repose, but that rest was the sweet- 
est which followed the shock of battle or which enabled him to 
recruit his energies for a more vigorous and determined encounter. 
Not in the peaceful vale of life where the very winds of heaven were 
subdued, not where nature herself was in repose, the fields smiling 
in verdure and strewn with flowers, inviting to luxury and ease, did 
this stern Senator find fitting material to gratify ambition or sum- 
mon his soul to loftiest endeavor. His home was upon Alpine 
heights, with the tempest and the avalanche to stir his heart with 
their wild melancholy to its profoundest depths; amid scenes of 
confusion and tumult, of popular excitement and seething con- 
flicts of opinion, his was the master-spirit, that could "ride the 
whirlwind and direct the storm." Fearless, collected, and immov- 



able, he was not to be diverted from his purpose by intimidation 
or execration on the one hand, or blandishments or cajolery on the 
other. 

His position was never one of doubt. Always at the front, with 
ringing voice, the mien and gesture of authority, Achilles-like, he 
" pined for the fierce joy and tumult of the fight." 

To a soul so tempered the events of the past twenty years have 
furnished ample opportunity for development. The threatening 
complications, the gathering gloom, the menace of the sections, the 
mutual defiance which charged the northern and the southern sky, 
unchained the lightning in his breast, and with swift, unsparing vigor 
he launched his thunders forth until hill and valley echoed back 
the sound, and armed men, fresh from the hearth, the work-shop, 
and the field, were marshaled in hot haste to vindicate what they 
believed to be the dearest right of the citizen and the most sacred 
obligations of the State. No man can charge the governor of 
Indiana, at the period of which I speak, with exercising any 
timid, doubtful, or vacillating policy. No man can truthfully 
assert that he faltered once, or for an instant quailed in assuming 
the tremendous responsibility created by a fierce and fratricidal 
war. 

The fires that were kindled on every mountain-top, the trumpet 
tones that awakened the echoes in every valley, were significant to 
him of a great and overmastering emergency. 

A national catastrophe, a separation into disjointed fragments of 
the glorious structure which he had hoped was to endure throughout 
the ages, and which, as the highest expression of human wisdom, 
was to secure for the race the perpetual enjoyment of civil and re- 
ligious liberty under the benign protection of the law — what won- 
der that, as he read the signals, the lurid flame shut out the stars, 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 89 

shut out the heavens, shut out all thought of mercy and all gentle 
thoughts. At home, when a boy, he heard from his father's lips 
the story of the Republic : The unknown, the undiscovered shore ; 
the voyage of Columbus over an untracked waste ; a new world be- 
yond the setting sun like a star risen from the ocean, with its strange 
inhabitants, its wondrous wealth, its marvelous promise ; the bleak 
December where the pilgrim fathers built on a rock the great cathe- 
dral of freedom, with the sea chanting its eternal anthems ; the des- 
olation of savage life ; the war-whoop, the tomahawk, the scalping- 
knife; the perpetual struggles of the colonists; the convulsions 
which attended the birth of States; the sublime utterances of inde- 
pendence; the battle-fields of the Revolution; the peerless Wash- 
in^rton: the government established under the Constitution; the 
consummate wisdom which distinguished the great charter of human 
rights ; the marvelous, the incredible energy which has reclaimed a 
continent from a weary waste to all the great uses of the most 
advanced civilization ; a country, a nation, his own, his grandsires, 
his children's, theirs to the end of time with its glorious memories, 
its hallowed associations and its golden promise — "all this rushed 
with his blood," and as he saw the glittering ranks and heard the 
firm tread of hostile armies he had but one thought, he breathed 
but one prayer. 

It was to strive to the uttermost with all the power which God 
had given him that he might resist with all the aids to be derived 
from earth and sea and sky or from the powers beneath the earth. 

He met the requirements of the hour with a fortitude, a patience, 
a laborious industry, an unceasing faith in the final success which 
found no discouragement, and no man rejoiced with a more exceed- 
ing joy than did he when the issues were determined and the unity 
and indivisibility of the nation were established in peace. 



12 



90 ADDRESS OF MR. HARDENBERGH ON THE 

It could not be supposed that a man of such force, so much weight 
of brain, so much strength of will, so much intense individuality, 
could pass through such a strife without forming conclusions of a 
decided and permanent character. AVith him principles were inde- 
pendent of the man. He would combat opinions without respect 
to persons. He had no disposition to compromise, to arrange, to 
weigh one force against another, to arbitrate in doubtful matters, 
to give and take as policy should decide, to smooth down rough 
edges that a wrong should insinuate itself upon the side of right and 
find encouragement on the ground of avoiding useless controversy. 
With him the path of duty only was the path of safety, and no 
matter through what difficult or dangerous roads it were neces- 
sary to traverse to perform that duty as he understood it, he 
would be deterred by no fears, no threats, no inducements of per- 
sonal aggrandizement, to abandon the severer and more painful 
course. 

It may be no disparagement to say that he was ambitious of 
power — not so much the direct control of men as the ability to use 
them to enforce and carry into effect those measures he conceived to 
be the wisest and the best adapted to promote the ends he had in 
view. And is there a man upon the roll of all such as have been 
distinguished in our annals who would not seek and exercise such 
power? No man has become truly great by negation. It is the 
aggressive, the positive, the calculating and determined energy of 
fearless and tireless pursuits which in the history of mankind has 
distinguished one man above another. 

We all remember with what apparent vindictiveness and harsh- 
ness he insisted upon the scheme of reconstruction. He was unwill- 
ing to relegate power to other hands than those who would use it 
as in his judgment it should be used. But he was better adapted: 



tho Clements of which he was composed found more congenial labor 
in resisting disintegration than in rebuilding the shattered frame- 
work of the Republic. His was a special ministry, and well and 
bravely did he exercise it. 

Senator Mokton was no time-server; he never bent "the preg- 
nant hinges of the knee" that thrift might follow fawning. He 
was direct, outspoken, without a sh=u:low of hypocrisy, and m al 
his personal relations he was the affectionate counselor, the stea^lfast 
friend, the generous patron, the disinterested ally, the uncompro- 
mising enemy of craft, of dissimulation, as well as of cant and 

insincerity. ^ 

How grateful to the memory of those who were upon terms ol 
privacy and intimacy with him must be the recollections of Ins many 
endearing and kindly virtues. To all rugged and manly attobutes 
he added a tender and gentle spirit which especially fitted hun for 
companionship and drew others to him with hooks of steel. Strong 
i„ his attachments, affectionate in his sympathies, he clung to he 
ties of kindred and of domestic love with an ardor and sensibility 
no time, no distance could weaken or diminish. None other than 
those who thus knew him best can so well appreciate the sore 
bereavement his departure has ««asioned; but the sacredness of 
private grief we shall not violate. 

His public career is before the world. Prominent in the councils 
of the nation, a gladiator upon the arena, he challenged and he 
defied criticism of that august body whose deUberations are before 
the world; he was of the foremost in debate. 

He easily extracted the pith and marrow of a subject and 
hurled his lance at the weak points of an adversary's armor with 
remarkable skill and power. He could take heavy blows without 
wincing, and one could not tell from any external expression 



92 ADDRESS OF MR. HARDENBERGH ON THE 

whether a vital point had been penetrated or not. I attempt not 
to delineate the peculiar qualities of the great Senator's mind. An 
accurate analysis requires far more comprehensive knowledge than 
mine can furnish to set forth in just measure and accurate detail 
the strength and power, the logical clearness, the profound 
thought, and acute discrimination which distinguished his career. 
As a party man his allegiance was faithful and his discipline 
exacting. 

I do not propose to consider the personal antagonism or the 
partisan rancor evoked by a character so uncompromising and so 
determined. In the collision of opposing interests, in the struggle 
to establish principles of administration irreconcilable and incapable 
of adjustment, the hostility of sects, of parties, and of individuals 
is a necessary consequence attending elaborate and inflammable dis- 
cussion. But a temper irritated by the malice of envy or aroused 
by the violence of revenge is to be distinguished from the earnest- 
ness which animates conviction or the fortitude which inspires the 
assertion of unpopular but far-reaching and comprehensive methods. 
The surface of the ocean may be vexed by inconstant and variable 
winds chafing the current and driving them from their course. It 
is the prolonged and mighty sweep of the tempest at whose com- 
mands the caverns of the deep are unlocked, her billows lifted to 
the skies, and the startled shores lashed and quivering beneath their 
remorseless fury. 

Mr. Speaker, on an occasion like this it is not becoming, as it 
would not be desirable, to arraign positions assumed upon questions 
which have been the subject of high controversy within these legis- 
lative Chambers, and which have not yet passed from the public 
observation. His opponents recognize his ability, for they have 
felt his power. The arm so often raised to strike is nerveless; the 



flashing eye is closed; thestalwart form is prostrate, a U-co„quermg 

death hath sealed the lips so eloquent to maintain and to defend in 

hi,h and well-considered argument. We remember on y that he 

.; true to himself and false to no man; that his speech ,vas the 

faithful interpreter of his own thoughts and his conduct the jus 

expression of his judgment; that he overtasked the prnu f W 

life in laborious efforts to inaugurate a pohey wh.eh he behev«l 

would best promote the general welfare; that, harassed by phys.^1 

infirmities, disturbed by the encro^hmente of disease, oppressed by 

the solicitude which aceompani^ a sen«. of wasting powers, he 

nerved himself with unfaltering conv^ge to meet the obligations of 

"' HeTd the exhausting flame of life upon an altar consecrated to 
the public service, and only with his last sigh expressed, in he 
pathL words, "I am worn out," surrendered to the mevitable 
Iditions which limit all ambition and all hope when earth is 
fading from sight and the weary eye is straining toward the im- 

mortal shore. . , , i i 

But still the man remains immort.1 in the imperishable record 
he has made, in the unfading honors he has won, in the deathless 
influence of his precepts and his example. 

What means this brief span of life, with its cares, its aspirations, 
its struggles, its triumphs, its defeats? 

Are the waters of Lethe to drown all in dark oblivion and the 
devouring grave to consume these activities forever? Ah Mr 
Speaker, it were but a poor reward for all our ambition that the 
laurel-leaf should be entwined upon our tomb, though the gene™- 
tions of the future even should keep it green with their tears. Man 
in all his wide domain hath no gift of honor which can satisfy the 
desires of an immortal soul. 



94 ADDRESS OF MR. HUNTER ON THE 

Let passion be hushed, for the grave is silent. Let flowers only 
spring from the mold, as emblems of that purer and better nature 
which alone will live in our memories and shall be cherished within 
our hearts. 

The hearse is passed, the knell is rung, 
The pageant and the pomp are done; 
A statesman lies at Christian rest, 
7/e, conclamatum est. 



Address of Mr. Hunter, of Indiana. 

]\Ir. Speaker, Oliver P. Morton, Indiana's greatest states- 
man, is numbered among the illustrious dead. He was a native of 
that State, born in Wayne County, August 4, 1823, and always 
remained a resident of it until his death. He died at the city of 
Indianapolis, November 1, 1877, in his fifty-fifth year. 

Among those who have attained national prominence as leaders 
of men, either in the early years of the Republic or in the not less 
eventful times of our own day, there has been no one in all the long 
and glorious list of patriotic statesmen who was so much to his State 
as was Oliver P. Morton to Indiana ; no one whose record was 
so great a part of his State's history ; no one whose influence in his 
State was so powerful and so universally acknowledged; no one 
whose death has left so great a void or been more deeply and sin- 
cerely mourned. 

Long shall we seek his likeness— long in vain, 
And turn to all of him which may remain, 
Sighing that Nature form'd but one such man. 

Governor Morton came of good old English stock that emi- 
grated to this country about the time of the breakuig out of the 
revolutionary war, whose most prominent traits of character he 
inherited in an unusual degree. His strong practical common sense, 
his indomitable will, his inflexibility of purpose, his courage that 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 95 

never faltered in opposing what he believed to be wrong, his con- 
fidence that such opposition must end in victory, however gloomy 
might seem the present prospect — all these were ancestml traits that 
gave to his life a large measure of success and placed him among 
the most conspicuous in the political history of the nation. 

He was not born to inlierit riches or to be nursed in the lap of 
luxury; lie had none of the advantages which ample fortune 
bestows ; nor, on the other hand, was his ambition repressed or " the 
genial current of his soul" frozen by the cruel frosts of poverty. 
His mother died when he was but four years old, and several years 
of his childhood were passed with her relatives in Springdale, Ohio. 
His facilities for acquiring information were meager, but he made 
the most of them and gained a thorough knowledge of the rudi- 
mentary branches of a common English education. Whether on 
the rude bench of a country school-house during a brief winter 
session or toiling at the hatter's trade, to which he was apprenticed 
at fifteen years of age, he wasted no opportunity of increasing his 
mental stores. His leisure hours and the odds and ends of time 
which most boys devote to play were utilized by him in reading 
and study. He did not neglect his trade. There was in him no 
contempt of labor, no scorn of laborers, for he always honored each; 
but his rapid intellectual growth, his unusual fondness for reading, 
and his remarkable judgment, which prompted him to select the 
best standard authors, historical, scientific, and metaphysical, induced 
the friends who were most interested in his welfare to give him an 
opportunity for further and more rapid progress in mental culture. 

He attended a seminary in his native county and subsequently 
entered Miami University, at Oxford, Ohio, but did not remain 
there to complete the regular course. At college he attained reputa- 
tion as a ready and forcible debater. Rapidity of thought and 



96 ADDRESS OF MR. HUNTER ON THE 

clearness of expression were his characteristics then as in after years. 
While others were pondering the proper words with which to fitly 
clothe their ideas, his thoughts found instant expression in plain, 
forcible, and appropriate terms. Throughout his life he showed 
wonderful command of language, and yet his store of words was 
neither rich nor beautiful, but strong, pointed, and convincing. He 
often evinced great mastery of eloquence, swaying the minds of 
juries, popular audiences, and legislative bodies, but his success as a 
speaker was not owing so much to the elegant manner of expression 
as to the strong, compact, and logical thoughts so forcibly uttered 
by him. He spoke the language of the masses so that " the com- 
mon people heard him gladly," he used no word beyond their com- 
prehension; but so fitly chosen were his words that they were 
equally well adapted to the ear of a statesman, a common laborer or 
a scholar, to the Senate or to a promiscuous audience upon the stump. 

Wliile others sought to erect gorgeous palaces, with columns and 
shafts of finely carved and polished marble, in which ornamentation 
and beautiful finish were more studied than strength of structure, 
he preferred to build strong walls of plain and solid granite. 

Leaving college at the ago of twenty-two, he began the study of 
law at Centreville, in his native county, and prosecuted this study 
with the utmost energy and thoroughness. He brought to the task 
exhaustless patience, keen perception, a wonderfully retentive mem- 
ory, and robust physical health. He worked with untiring zeal 
and with a firm determination to master each step in his upward 
and onward career. Admitted to the bar in 1847, he struggled for 
success amid many discouragements; but courage and pluck 
triumphed ; he attained a large and, for those days and that section, 
a lucrative practice. In civil and criminal cases he w^as alike emi- 
nent; and, had he continued to devote his time and energies to his 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 






profession, there is no reason to doubt that he would have attained 
the highest professional fame and ample fortune. Few men ever 
surpassed him in power to plant conviction in the mind of a court 
or jury, which made him successful as a practitioner and soon gave 
him the reputation as an attorney who seldom lost a case. 

To review the political career of Senator Morton would consume 
hours, where I have only moments. He was originally a democrat, 
but ciist off his allegiance to that party when its proslavery tend- 
encies were manifested in the repeal of the Missouri compromise; 
and from that hour to the close of his life he was among the fore- 
most, often the most conspicuous, opponent to the policy and meas- 
ures of the democratic party. 

The month of November, 1860, found the country hopelessly 
and helplessly, to all appearances, drifting to certain ruin. Secession 
conventions had been called in the South, armies were being formed 
there and drilled, and the determination of political leaders in that 
section to destroy the Union was but too painfully apparent. In 
the North there was almost fatal hesitancy and a spirit of compro- 
mise that, had it been permitted to prevail, would have been a 
death-blow to national unity. It was at that critical moment, says 
a recent biographer of Senator Morton— 

T.atastron.n.an rose in ^^^^^^^^^X ^'^^^^^^ 
patriotism^His words wore b ^^^;^^^^ ^,;,,,,,, no way for the 

3;ls?aestfge out oF the union, and that they must be kept in if need be 
bv fo ce ''The whole question," said he, "is summed up in this proposition : Are 
^T;ntinn one people or thirty-three nations, or thirty-three independent and 

the whole ground and outlined the policy which he would pursue. It was not only 
wise and patriotic; it was prophetic. 



13 



98 ADDRESS OF MR. HUNTER ON THE 

In 1860 he was elected lieutenant-governor, and in January, 
1861, he became governor, by the election of Governor Henry S. 
Lane to the United States Senate, and from that moment he became 
prominent before the nation, prominent as few men ever have been 
or ever can be, for the occasion of his prominence was an event not 
likely to recur again in our national history. 

It is as the war governor of Indiana that Morton is best known, 
and whoever shall truly write the history of that eventful period 
cannot fail to place the name and deeds of Oliver P. Morton 
among the very foremost of those that saved the Republic. In his 
State, more than any other of the Northern States, there was sym- 
pathy with the rebellion and opposition to the war. But Governor 
Morton's resistless energy swept all sympathy and opposition from 
his pathway, and inspired even the timid and faint-hearted with 
something of his own great courage, his own unyielding hope. His 
capacity as an organizer and his unparalleled executive ability 
astonished and delighted all loyal men. He had troops ready in 
anticipation of calls; no call for men ever elicited a tardy or a 
reluctant response, and in almost every instance Indiana was the 
first State to send a cheering reply to President Lincoln when he 
asked for fresh levies of troops. In advance of every other State 
of the West in preparation for war, Indiana led all others in her 
care for soldiers in the field ; and there was not an Indiana soldier 
in any of our armies who did not know and feel that Governor 
Morton was his friend. 

Through all these terrible years, with the same inteuse earnest- 
ness, the same untiring energy, the same unflinching loyalty, he 
continued to support the Union cause and to keep his State in the 
front rank of those on which Mr. Lincoln knew he could rely in 
any emergency for men and money. Treason in his own State 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 99 

could uot dishearten nor deter him, nor could it find him unpre- 
pared to meet and crush it wherever it undertook to assert itself. 
Hatred and malice could not divert his attention for one moment 
from the great cause of the imperiled Union. With sublime forti- 
tude he pressed on and bore others with him to the glorious end ; 
and had he done no more, had his life terminated with the close of 
the war, he would still have lived long enough to inscribe his name 

among 

The few, the immortal names, 
That were not born to die. 

As a Senator his career was as full of hope and promise to the 
loyal element of the nation as was the bow in the cloud to Noah 
and his children. To him more than to any other man is due the 
credit of such legislation as has preserved some portion of the fruits 
of Union victories in the late war. In the Senate he passed through 
no probationary state, but at once became prominent and soon the 
recognized leader of the dominant party in that Chamber. 

As a debater, as a constant participant in extemporaneous dis- 
cussion, he has had few equals, if any superior, in the Senate at 
any period of our history. It was not uncommon for him in a ten- 
minute oiF-haud speech to utterly destroy the effect of a long and 
elaborate oration. The most eloquent statesmen, the ripest scholars, 
and most graceful speakers dreaded contact with the huge bowlders 
hurled by him in debate with so much precision, force, and effect- 
iveness in the form of strong, plain, concise, and logical arguments, 
and with which he assaulted the positions of all who opposed him. 
With the great measures of the American Congress which connect 
themselves with the questions of liberty, equality, and human 
rights the name of Senator Morton is indissolubly associated. 

The political opponents of Senator Morton always respected 
him for his sincerity and straightforwardness. He detested hypoc- 



100 ADDRESS OF MR. HUNTER ON THE 

risy and despised all cowardly and underhanded dealings. He 
fought boldly, and always carried the positions of the enemy by 
direct assault in open day, and he never left his opponents in doubt 
for one moment as to how he would act in any emergency. They 
knew that he would oppose them openly, fairly, manfully, and 
gain his victory, if at all, by such means only as are approved by 
honorable men. 

As a friend Senator Morton was, in the highest and best sense 
of the word, loyal. His attachments were not hastily formed ; were 
based on strong grounds and not easily shaken. Much of his influ- 
ence over men was due to the fact that he was true to his friends. 

In the social circle he was attractive. He was not only a good 
talker, but enjoyed listening to others who were interesting in con- 
versation, and had the happy faculty of making even the most 
humble feel at ease and unembarrassed in his presence. He was 
never obtrusive with counsel, but free to give it when asked. He 
was gentle, genial, and full of the milk of human kindness. He 
loved children and was beloved by them. At his home with his 
family there was no kinder husband nor tenderer father, and no 
man was ever rewarded with greater devotion and purer affection 
than were lavished on him by the members of his domestic circle. 

For many years and under varied circumstances, in peace and 
war, in sunsliine and in shadow, it was my privilege to know and 
to be admitted to the friendship of Oliver P. Morton. I hon- 
ored him as a man and loved him as a friend. It is, perhaps, too 
soon after the bitterness and heart-burnings of the political strife 
of the last fifteen years to expect that all should do justice to his 
noble qualities of head and heart. He was as little influenced by 
personal animosities as any man I ever knew. He could hate what 
he deemed political heresies, and yet cherish kindly feelings toward 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 101 

tliose who lield such views. Many of his warm and most intimate 
friends were opposed to him in politics. But he never allowed this 
difference of opinion to aifect his friendship. Each day of his life 
he grew stronger in the affections of the people of his own State as 
well as those of the nation, and to Oliver P. Morton more than 
any other man did they look for a proper solution of the various 
troubles, political and financial, which now surround and embarrass 
the country. His loss, therefore, was not that merely of a great 
and good man, but it was a national calamity. 

In his last sickness he was a great sufferer, but he bore his afflic- 
tions with patience and resignation, and when worn out by disease, 
with a heart free from malice, he closed his high career in the arms 
of death, loved, honored, and respected by the people of his State 
and nation, whom he served so faithfully and so well. 



Address of Mr. Garfield, of Ohio. 

For all the great professions known among Americans special 
training-schools have been established or encouraged by law except 
for that of statesmanship. And yet no profession requires for its 
successful pursuit a wider range of general and special knowledge 
or a more thorough and varied culture. 

Probably no American youth, unless we except John Quincy 
Adams, was ever trained with special reference to the political ser- 
vice of his country. 

In monarchial governments not only wealth and rank but polit- 
ical authority descends by inheritance from father to son. The 
eldest son of an English peer knows from his earliest childhood 
that a seat awaits him in the House of Lords. If he be capable 
and ambitious the dreams of his boyhood and the studies of his 



U)2 ADDRESS OF MR. GARFIELD ON THE 

youth are directed toward the great field of statesmanship. To the 
favored few this system affords many and great advantages, and 
upon the untitled many, whom "birth's invidious bar" shuts out 
from the highest places of power, it must rest with discouraging 
weight. 

Our institutions confer special privileges upon no citizen, and we 
may now say they erect no barrier in the honorable career of the 
humblest American. They open an equal pathway for all, and 
invite the worthiest to the highest seats. The fountains of our 
strength as a nation spring from the private life and the voluntary 
efforts of forty-five millions of people. Each for himself confronts 
the problem of life, and amid its varied conditions develops tlic 
forces with which God has endowed him. Meantime the nation 
moves on in its great orbit with a life and destiny of its own, each 
year calling to its aid those qualities and forces which are needed 
for its preservation and its glory. Now it needs the prudence of 
the counselor, now the wisdom of the law-giver, and now the shield 
of the warrior to cover its heart in the day of battle. And when 
the hour and the man have met and the needed work has been 
done, the nation crowns her heroes and makes them her own 
forever. 

Such hours we have often seen during the last seventeen years, 
hours which have called forth the great elements of manhood and 
strength from the ranks of our people and crowded our pantheon 
with new accessions of glory. 

Seventeen years ago, at a moment of supreme peril, the nation 
called upon the people of twenty-two States to meet around her 
altar and defend her life. 

Of all the noble men who responded to that call no voice rang 
out with more clearness and power than that of Oliver P. Mor- 



LIFE AND CHAEACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 



103 



TON the young governor of Indiana. He was then but thirty- 
seven years of age. Self-made, as all men are who are worth the 
making, he had risen from a hard life of narrow conditions by fight- 
ing his own way, thinking his own thoughts, and uttering them 
without fear, until by the fortune of political life he had become 
the chief executive of his State. He saw at once and declared the 
terrible significance of the impending struggle, and threw his whole 
weio-ht into the conflict. His State and my own marched abreast 
in generous emulation. But he was surrounded by difficulties and 
dangers which hardly found a parallel in any other State. With 
unconquerable will and the energy of a Titan he encountered and 
overcame them all; and keeping Indiana in line with the foremost, 
he justly earned the title of one of the greatest war governors of 
that heroic period. 

Thus the great need of the nation called forth and fixed in the 
enduring colors of fame those high qualities which thirty-seven 
years of private life had been preparing. 

To learn the lesson of his great life, let us recall briefly its lead- 
ing characteristics. 

He was a great organizer. He knew how to evoke and direct 
the enthusiasm of his people. He knew how to combine and mar- 
shal his forces, political or military, so as to concentrate them all 
upon a single object and inspire them with his own ardor. 

I have often compared hun with Stanton, our great War Secre- 
tary, whose windows at the War Office for many years far into the 
night shone out, "like battle-lanterns lit," while he mustered great 
armies and launched them into the tempest of war and "organized 
victory." In the whole circle of the States no organizer stood 
nearer to him in character and qualities and friendship than Oliver 
P. Morton. 



104 ADDRESS OF MR. GARFIELD ON THE 

His force of will was most masterful. It was not mere stub- 
bornness or pride of opinion which weak and narrow men mistake 
for firmness ; but it was that stout-hearted persistency which, hav- 
ing once intelligently chosen an object, pursues it through sunshine 
and storm, undaunted by difficulties and unterrified by danger. 

He possessed an intellect of remarkable clearness and force. With 
keen analysis he found the core of a questson and worked from the 
center outwards. He cared little for the mere graces of speech ; 
but few men have been so greatly endowed with the power of clear 
statement and unassailable argument. The path of his thought was 
straight — 

Like that of the swift cannon-ball, 
Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches. 

When he had hit the mark he used no additional words and 
sought for no decoration. These qualities, joined to his power of 
thinking quickly, placed him in the front rank of debaters and 
every year increased his power. 

It has been said that Senator Morton was a partisan, a strong 
partisan, and this is true. In the estimation of some this detracts 
from his fame. That evils arise from extreme partisanship there 
can be no doubt. But it should not be forgotten that all free gov- 
ernments are party governments. Our great Americans have been 
great partisans. Senator Morton was not more partisan than 
Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Clay, Calhoun, Benton, Marshall, 
Taney, or Chase. Strong men must have strong convictions, and 
"one man with a belief is a greater power than a thousand that 
have only interests." Partisanship is opinion crystallized, and 
party organizations are the scaffoldings whereon citizens stand while 
they build up the wall of their national temple. Organizations 
may change or dissolve, but when parties cease to exist liberty will 
perish. 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 105 

In conclusion, let nie say that the memory of Governor INIorton 
will be forever cherished and honored by the soldiers of my State. 
They fought side by side with the soldiers of Indiana, and on a 
Inmdred glorious fields his name was the battle-cry of the noble 
regiments which he had organized and inspired with his own lofty 
spirit. 

To the nation he has left the legacy of his patriotism and the 
example of a great and eventful life. 



Address of Mr. BUNNELL, of Minnesota. 

Mr. Speaker, the life and character of the late Senator INIorton 
will be read and admired by generations of American citizens yet 
unborn. The moral and intellectual qualities which his public ser- 
vices developed and made conspicuous Avere such as all the noble 
dead must have possessed and exercised. Enduring fame must 
have a cause. It is not an accident. It is not attained by a mod- 
erate use of the common qualities of heart or brain, but must be 
the offspring of mental or moral powers, clearly and unmistakably 
great. The man whose name shall outlive that of his fellows must 
surpass them in character or deed as much as he would have his 
name go beyond theirs on its way to coming time. 

While the subject of our eulogies to-day had in large develop- 
ment not a few of the rarest traits of human character, I shall be 
content to call attention to the strength of his convictions and his 
tenacity of purpose. 

His convictions were so strong and deep that they banished from 
him every element of moral weakness. He, therefore, spent no 
time in doubt or in a discussion of measures suggested by doubt. 
He lost no force by the intimations of mere expediency. The 



14 



106 ADDRESS OF MR. BUNNELL ON THE 

cause which he espoused became a part of his very being and 
drove from him every vestige of fear. His convictions made him 
bold. Luther was not bolder when he uttered the words which put 
his name upon the imperishable scroll of fame. 

He was tenacious of purpose. With his deep, thorough convic- 
tions he could not have been otherwise. The exciting scenes 
through which he passed between 1861 and the time of his too 
early death furnished abundant occasions for a display of the traits 
of character to which I have referred. The great Roman poet 
could describe in no juster words the immortal Augustus, than to 
say of him: 

Justum et tenacem propositi virum, 
Non civium ardor prava Jubentium, 
Non vultus instantis tyranni, 
Solida quatit mente. 

These words give a reason why the succeeding ages have kept the 
deeds and name of Augustus safe from the touch of time. Not less 
could the American statesman, whose life we fittingly eulogize this 
day, than the Roman hero, be moved from his fixed purposes by 
the fierceness of citizens commanding wrong courses of action or the 
presence of the threatening tyrant or traitor. 

It is not strange that Oliver P. Morton, almost in a day, 
passed from comparative obscurity into a well-merited national 
renown, when as governor of Indiana he at once displayed his pre- 
eminent fitness to meet the terrible exigencies of the hour. The 
wicked devices of his personal enemies and those of liis country 
only the more perfectly brought into immediate play the rare gifts 
of head and heart with which God had endowed him. It cannot be 
told here by what courage, by what almost superhuman labors, by 
what consummate use of means, and by what rare wisdom he held 
his State in the orbit of loyalty and duty. His great patriotism 



LIFE AND CIIArvACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 107 

could endure no limits to its exercise less than those which bounded 
the entire country. He could not hesitate when the great work 
was upon him. History will not let slip the labors of Governor 
Morton during the period of war. He sought out, shaped, and 
controlled every force. He was the State itself. In and through 
him it acted. It is said of Henry II : 

He himself was always the center of all power. lie remembered everything, he 
thought of everything, he cared for everything. Nothing escaped his eye and his 
hand. 

These words in English history will find their place in American 
history when the life of Governor Morton shall be written. An 
official integrity, rendered all the more brilliant by a futile attempt 
to impeach it, added its luster to the steady, unyielding tenacity 
with which he guided his State into the path of supreme devotion 
to the Republic. He so discharged the vast responsibilities that the 
nation applauded, and when peace came the State gave him a seat 
in the Senate Chamber of the nation. 

His services in the Senate need no formal recital of incidents. 
From the first he took and held a place among the ablest in that 
distinguished body. No important measure was considered there, 
during his term of service, which he did not discuss and elucidate. 
The clearness of his style and the earnestness with which he en- 
forced the conclusions of his logic always gave him the attention 
of the Senate. The great occasion found him ready and equal to 
its demands. His power in debate was due, in no small degree, to 
the unmistakable sincerity and enthusiasm with which he yielded 
to and followed his convictions. He spoke from a heart filled with 
belief. His eloquence was born in the soul, and hence was real, 
true eloquence. He was not content simply to meet the questions 
which came before the Senate in the ordinary course of business, — he 



108 ADDRESS OF MR. DUNNELL ON THE 

indicated measures which the Government would need in comino; 
periods of her life. He was the sagacious statesman. 

Senator Morton was eminent for his devotion to the republican 
party. He held to it as unfalteringly as he did to the cause of the 
Union itself. He believed in its principles, and deemed their tri- 
umph essential to the highest weal of the country. For their tri- 
umph his voice was heard by millions of his countrymen. It was 
raised in dignified argument. Speaking with him was but the 
logical arrangement of facts and the enforcement of their teachings. 
This was done with the seriousness which honest and deeply cher- 
ished convictions never fail to produce. It is needless to say that 
he was an effective speaker, that the people delighted to hear him, 
that they honored the man who honored them by the very manner 
in which he addrassed them. His campaign speeches were a mas- 
terly statement of the issues involved in the canvass. No man in 
the party surpassed him in this respect. His opening speeches, as 
they were often denominated, were eagerly looked for. They be- 
came texts for party speakers in every State in the Union. Their 
effect upon the public mind was marvelous, and therein attested the 
genius of their author. 

But, sir, how vain the effort to recount the labors and the public 
achievements of the lamented Senator. Words fail us. We can 
but wonder that a life so soon ended should bear such rich, abundant 
fruit. We mourn the dead, yet rejoice that this resplendent life 
was given to the nation. 

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
****** He most lives 

Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. 



LIFE A^D CHAEACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 109 



Address of Mr. Williams, of ^ATisconsin. 

Mr. Speaker, when the wife of Oliver P. Morton, at the 
bedside of her dead husband, exclaimed: "Oh, my boys!" a 
nation listened, and a nation realized how strong the chords that 
had been broken, how great the light that had gone out. 

Real greatness and true worth achieve their loftiest triumphs 
and their best results when, while fighting the battles of a nation, 
they intrench themselves deeper and stronger in the affections of 
wife and children, neighbor and friend. . 

Such a man I think was Oliver P. Morton. If he was great 
in head, he was great also in heart. He ever took tlie side of 
the weaker party. He was the friend of the friendless and the 
champion of the oppressed. Their wrongs were his wrong; their 
griefs were his grief; and if when his sense of justice was touched 
and all his energies were roused, he fought with the fierceness 
and courage of the lion, so when the contest was over he forgave 
with the simplicity and tenderness of a child. 

He only wanted to know that the settlement, whatever it might 
be, was genuine and sincere. He hated all shams and pretenses. 
He knew nothing of circumlocution; he went straight to the 
question before him, and as his own words sped like bullets to 
the mark, so fine phrases and the tricks of speech had no charm 
for him except as they stood for the very truth of the matter 
in question. He was no temporizer. 

He had no heart to build where he felt there was a flaw in 
the foundation. He would sooner dig to the bottom and replace 
all rotten timbers with sound material than rely on the props and 
stays of expedients to give strength to the superstructure. 

In his earnestness of purpose and in the fire and heat of debate 



110 ADDRESS OF MR. WILLIAISIS ON THE 

lie was not always the most choice in liis use of language, but no 
man, either friend or foe^ ever mistook its honest meaning. 

He was a true man. He shirked no responsibility and shunned 
no duty, but whether in the wildest hour of rebellion he struggled 
for the honor and fidelity of his native State or for the integrity and 
glory of the entire Union, his sledge-hammer blows brought down 
upon the great anvil of public opinion rang out the notes to which 
a patriotic land responded. 

For such a man there was and could be no rest. 

We are told that he loved his home and all the joys of domestic 
peace, but his public life was a life of storm and battle. It could 
not well be otherwise; for while in all the land there was one 
human being, even one of the humblest of God's creatures, denied 
a single constitutional right, Oliver P. Morton could not and 
would not be peaceable. Whatever others might say or do, when 
he believed that scores and hundred of American citizens were 
being slaughtered in cold blood for the bare assertion of their 
political rights, he never flinched from saying so either from the 
rostrum, before the people, or from his seat in the Senate in the 
presence of all his peers. 

For such a man, I repeat, there was and there could be no peace; 
and had his life been spared as long as some of us might have 
hoped, it would have been all the same. The contest would have 
gone on; he would have been assailed, abused, and vilified while 
living; he would have been loved, honored, and revered when dead. 

Mr. Speaker, these are the penalties and these the rewards which 
Grod himself has attached to the conscientious performance of public 
duty. Mr. Morton was not only a courageous but he was an honest 
man. His lot was cast in the stormiest period of the Republic. For 
seventeen years he stood in the full glare of opportunity. As gov- 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. Ill 

ernor of Indiana he disbursed large sums of the pubHc money ; he 
had patronage to bestow. In the Senate he frequently became the 
champion of measures involving vast property interests. The dis- 
bursement of millions of money might turn upon his voice or vote, and 
yet he died leaving a competence only such as a frugal life could gather. 

His style of living was the most unpretentious. It has been said of 
him that at one time, when fashion spread her crimson sails and the 
sea of gayety rolled unchecked through tliis capital, Mr. Morton's 
coachman donned the livery of the time, and the Senator observing 
this, without ostentation of any kind and without attempting in the 
slighest degree to dictate as to the tastes or customs of others, simply 
intimated to his coachman that the plain garb of the American citi- 
zen would do for him and would have to do for the driver of his 
cab; and we all remember that primitive vehicle in which, from 
necessity, he rode from the Capitol to his lodgings. 

These are slight matters, perhaps scarcely worth the mentioning ; 
and yet, in the language of the immortal Lincoln, "the plain people 
will understand them." 

I well remember an incident which occurred during the last 
Congress. A committee of which I chanced to be a member was 
charged with certain investigations. A witness had mentioned the 
name of Mr. Morton in connection with a proposed improper fee. 
It was an obscure insinuation and in no wise rose to the dignity of 
a charge. The testimony was printed in an evening paper. The 
next morning, no sooner were our doors opened than the rattle of 
the Senator's canes was heard on the marble stairway leading to 
the committee-room J and the manner in which he confronted his 
accuser and the celerity with which the charge was withdrawn con- 
vinced all who witnessed the scene that Oliver P. Morton was 
able and ready to defend his honor whenever assailed. 



112 ADDRESS OF ME. WILLIAMS ON THE 

Mr. Speaker, I am not on the list of his eulogists because I can 
pretend to have enjoyed his intimate acquaintance. And yet at 
one time certain minor committee duties threw me frequently in his 
society, and I had the good fortune to hear him discuss in the 
unreserve of social intercourse some of the most important questions 
of the day. I think whoever heard him at such times could not 
fail to be convinced that central facts and fundamental ideas were 
the guiding-star of his life. 

I remember going to him at one time in the Senate and making 
the inquiry when he expected to complete a speech which he had 
commenced upon Mississippi afiPairs. With an air of gravity 
amounting almost to sadness he replied, "I am not sure that I 
shall ever complete it." He then went on to say that his only 
object in making it was to get certain facts before the country, but 
that, under the policy of journalism then in vogue, while whole 
columns and pages of the remarks of opponents were given to the 
public, of which he did not complain, scarcely a dozen lines of 
these facts were allowed to appear. And he added, with an em- 
phasis which I shall never forget: 

The truth is, that congressional documents and reports are fast becoming the 
mere tombs of facta which if known in detail would startle the country with 
horror. 

That speech was never completed. It remains as he left it, a 
specimen of his unfinished work. 

And, Mr. Speaker, I sometimes fear the time will yet come in 
this country — which may God in his mercy avert — when that 
speech, standing like a broken column, may prove a monumental 
reminder to the American people that one of their gravest mistakes 
was that at one of the most critical periods of their history they 
neglected to take the advice and counsel of Oliver P. Morton. 

It has sometimes been charged that in his public acts he was 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 113 



moved only by a spirit of hatred. I do not think the man ever 
knew the feeling of hate, except that hatred which he felt for all 
forms of wrong and injustice. And I think the day is rapidly 
approaching when this will be universally conceded, and when 
none will be more ready to acknowledge it than those who are his 
bitterest, his ablest, and therefore most generous opponents. He 
simply followed his convictions of duty wherever they led him. 

Could he rise from the grave to-day to pronounce his own eulogy, 
I doubt if he could do it in fitter language than when he said of 
Henry Wilson : 

His great strength was in his convictions. He was a man of ideas, and relied 
upon ideas for success. He was a man of courage. He dared to follow his convic- 
tions wherever they led him. 

So with Mr. Morton. He was full of convictions and fearfully 
in earnest. He seldom jested and never trifled. To him the con- 
flicts of life were fraught with awful reality, and such of them as 
fell to his lot were prosecuted with the skill of a master. But 
while he marshaled all his, means and fought Kke a Hercules for 
success he never sacrificed the fidelity of a friend to gain the favor 

of an enemy. 

Mr. Speaker, when the scafiblding falls away the structure reveals 
itself in its true outline and proportions. So when the mists and 
circumstances of the present shall have passed, impartial judgment 
will assign Oliver P. Morton his proper place in history. I do 
not propose to attempt that here to-day; but the work for which 
Greeley wrought, which Sumner prosecuted, which Morton pushed 
up to the very shore-line of death, will never be forgotten while 
American history is written or read. 

And as error must give way to truth, force to reason, wrong to 
right, injustice to justice, and the equality of law ultunately prevail 
over all alike, so do I beUeve that the names of Giddings and Gree- 



1.5 



114 ADDRESS OF MR. HA2;ELT0N ON THE 

ley, Seward and Sumner, Chase and Stevens, Lincoln and Wilson, 
will stand all the tests of the future and grow brighter and brighter 
as time rolls on. 

Last, but not least, in this list of departed statesmen stands the 
name of Oliver P. Morton. 

Broken in health, stricken in body, but unconquered and uncon- 
querable in spirit, he stood guard to the last over the precious lega- 
cies left to his care. 

But he, too, is numbered with the dead. His voice is silent and 
he rests at last in the soil of his native State. The snows of winter 
mantle his grave and the winds that sweep the broad prairies of 
Indiana sing a sad requiem around his tomb. His name will be cut 
in brass, in bronze, and in marble; but, Mr. Speaker, when brass 
and bronze shall have corroded and crumbled, when marble shall 
have disintegrated and gone to ashes, then, as season follows season, 
as winter releases its grasp and flowers bloom upon his grave, so shall 
the memory of Oliver P. Morton ever spring fresh and green 
and beautiful in the grateful hearts of a loving people. 



Address of Mr. Hazelton, of Wisconsin. 

Mr. Speaker, Morton is dead, and the American Congress 
which he honored in his life pauses to-day to pay becoming rever- 
ence to his memory. They buried him at the capital of his native 
State amid the farewells, the tears, and the loves of kindred and 
friends, and now the nation bends down to cast the garlands of its 
respect and love upon his bier as it passes by. 

He was the child of the Republic and his life-work stands among 
the grandest achievements of the nineteenth century. He is a 
marked example in our history of the beauty and the value of free 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 115 

institutions in his development from the ranks of the people, up 
through State lines to the horizon of national politics and states- 
manship broadened to the utmost limits of the Republic. 
Carlyle said : 

He is most a king who malies the strongest impression on the age in which he 
lives though his scepter be a walking-sticls. 

In American polity he is most a statesman who makes the strong- 
est impression on the age in which he lives for the good of his race 
and for human progress, and of such was Oliver P. Morton. The 
present and the future will see him, as in the hour of the nation's 
peril, as the great war governor of Indiana he organized victory 
against a gigantic opposition and replenished the exhausted exchequer 
of his State upon his own honor; will see him as he stood by the tot- 
tering pillars of the American Union to uphold and maintain them 
with his wisdom and his strength ; will see him as he devoted his 
great energies, his lofty patriotism, his broad and practical states- 
manship, the best labor of his life, and in the end life itself, to make 
us a freer and a better people. 

Looking upon the face of Daniel Webster as he lay in his coffin by 
the sea, a loving neighbor remarked : " The world will be lonesome, 
Mr. Webster, now you are gone;" and so I thought when Morton 
died, as I passed through the "long-drawn aisles" of the Capitol 
to his place in the Senate ; to the chair craped with mourning ; to the 
desk adorned by some loving hand with sweet flowers of condolence. 
It was the vacant chair at the nation's fireside, and I thought how 
lost the Senate, the party, the nation, the cause of human rights 
without him. Here in the Senate he took his stand for all that is 
valuable in human government; from this point radiates the light of 
his great work out into the world and across the centuries. Here 
his immortal hand help fashion the amendments to the Constitution, 



116 ADDEESS OF MR. HAZELTON ON THE 

which are the jewels of the world's liberty, and here he proclaimed 
the doctrine higher than all others, the doctrine of American life, of 
American vitality, of American perpetuity, of American duty ; that 
the sovereignty of this nation, represented by its flag on land and sea, 
the sovereign power of the nation, was pledged to the maintenance 
of the rights of all its citizens, high and low, for all time on American 
soil ; and for the rights and the duty of the Government to maintain 
and enforce it he was as 

Constant as the northern star, 
Of ^^fhose true-fixed and resting quality 
There is no fellow in the firmament. 

Upon the question of equality before the law, in its declamtion and 
in its maintenance for ten years in our history he stands peerless. 

He loved power, but he never would have exercised it except to 
strengthen the grounds of liberty among men. He was ambitious, 
but he never would have exercised or used his ambition beyond the 
legitimate purposes of maintaining the liberty of man. He was 
honest ; amid all the clouds of darkness that fell down upon that 
period of our history, when speculation was rife, when the fierce 
race for wealth had no scruple, "he kept the whiteness of his soul." 

Mr. Speaker, Oliver P. Morton will be seen and heard in the 
councils of this nation no more forever. He has gone down to rest 
with the distinguished dead of the Republic, with her heroes and 
statesmen, with the immortal Douglas and Lincoln and Seward 
and Sumner ; but his name and memory, like theirs and like the 
great deeds of American history, a part of which he was, will hve 
until the evening stars shall fade away. There shall be but few 
prouder monuments in all America than that inscribed with his 
name and sacred to his memory. The pilgrim and lover of liberty 
"in the far ages yet to be shall come to kneel beside his grave and 
hail him prophet of the free." 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 117 



Address of Mr. Calkins, of Indiana. 

Mr. Speaker, the last words of Senator Morton deserve to be 
perpetuated in these memorial exercises. From the verge of the 
grave, in the unequal contest with the "grim monster/' with husky 
voice he cried out "I am worn out; I am dying/' and the next 
instant his spirit unfettered took its flight to realms unknown. 

I propose to address myself to a few of the prominent char- 
acteristics of Senator Morton as they impressed me in a long 
acquaintance with him, though not as intimate as that of many 
others who have addressed the House upon this occasion. In the 
nature of things I could not be on as intimate relations with him 
as many others nearer his age and who conmienced political life 
about the time he did. 

He entered prominently into politics while I was yet a boy, and 
from the beginning assumed the leadership of the rej^ublican party 
in my State and maintained it to the end. If the party in the 
nation during the last decade has had a leader he has approached 
nearer to that place than any other man in its ranks, — I mean a 
leadership in the sense of marking out and shaping national issues, 
announcing principles around and upon which the great body of the 
party crystallized, in which they believed, and for which they went 
out to do battle for their party. 

Coming to the political front, as he did, at a time when great 
upheavals in public sentiment were being constantly cast to the 
surface and when political strife had fanned the flames of partisan- 
ship into a consuming fire, one less resolute, situated and sur- 
rounded as he was, would have been utterly crushed and over- 
whelmed. In my State the difference in the numerical strength of 



118 ADDRESS OF MR. CALKINS ON THE 

the two great parties has always been small, and it has always 
required the best generalship to marshal the entire forces of both 
parties. To this work, as a natural leader. Senator Morton was 
eminently fitted and qualified. 

In 1856 his party, then in its infancy, nominated him as its stand- 
ard-bearer at the head of the ticket; although at that time he was 
just entering politics and was comparatively a young man. His de- 
feat made him stronger with the people than he was before, and like 
Lincoln's defeat in the great and ever memorable canvass between 
him and Douglas in 1858, in Illinois, the record he made brought 
him more prominently before the people and they regarded him as 
a leader and as a statesman. 

In 1860 he accepted the second place on the republican ticket with 
ex-Senator Lane at its head. The republicans of the State at that 
time — as well they might — congratulated themselves that they had 
combined the elements of popularity and strength in the choice thus 
made. All who have ever listened to Senator Lane will bear me 
witness that he had few equals as a popular orator and that few 
men could sway the masses as he did. Following close upon the 
magnetism of this popular orator. Senator Morton made his ap- 
pearance upon tlie stump in that canvass, and with his clear-cut, 
crisp sentences and terse logic drove conviction deep into the hearts 
of all who heard him. The success of the republican party at that 
election resulted in calling Governor Lane to the United States 
Senate and Oliver P. Morton to the gubernatorial chair of the 
State. 

I shall not pass in review his many acts while governor from 
1861 to 1864, except to refer to a few occasional and exceptional 
instances, which serve to bring out in strong light the remarkable 
gifts of leadership and ability which he possessed. 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 119 

Among the first acts of Governor Morton, after he became act- 
ing governor of the State, which I now recollect, was his famous 
speech at Indianapolis upon the duty of each of the States then not 
in rebellion to furnish troops and supplies for maintaining the 
National Union. I remember how his sentences went through the 
press of the State and cemented all persons, irrespective of party, 
who loved the Union and desired to see it perpetuated. I will not 
at this time quote from his speech, for it is familiar to all. Suffice 
it to say that from that time every man in Indiana knew what 
would be the policy and course of its governor in the suppression 
of the rebellion, then in its incipiency. It was a masterly effi)rt. 
It was quoted not only throughout the length and breadth of the 
State, but all over the North. It had the effect on those who were 
wavering of deciding them. It combined the Union sentiment of 
the two great political parties which had just before then been fighting 
for political mastery, and thenceforward in the State there was built 
up a patriotic sentiment second to none in the Union. Following 
close upon this he commenced the organization of troops in response 
to President Lincoln's call, and thenceforward was among the first 
governors to respond to each successive call. 

During his administration Indiana furnished over two hundred 
thousand soldiers. This included some re-enlistments, but it does 
not include the re-enlistment of veteran organizations. 

The raising and equipment of these troops was a Herculean task, 
and it was often remarked during and since the war that Governor 
Morton's efforts for the Indiana troops seemed almost super- 
human, and his personal presence among them did more to cement 
and encourage them in their perilous hours than any other act per- 
formed by any man during the war. It will be remembered that 
he personally bade each regiment that left the State " good-bye," 



120 ADDRESS OF MR. CALKINS ON THE 

giving them words of cheer and encouragement, and, with rare 
exceptions, was present to welcome them back when they returned 
worn and scarred with their laurels at the close of the conflict. He 
never forgot them nor ceased his ministrations while they were in 
the field. After the bloody engagement at Fort Donelson, I well 
remember seeing him arrive on the first boat that ascended the 
river with supplies and medicines for the wounded, accompanied 
by his staff of volunteer physicians, to personally look after the 
wants of the survivors. After every battle where Indiana soldiers 
fought he was among the first — if not the first — to reach the field 
with supplies and necessaries, and to minister to the wants and 
comforts of those who survived; and I cannot describe more 
eloquently his devotion to them than to quote from an Indiana 
wounded soldier after the battle of Shiloh, when he said : 



I saw the old governor reach out and shake hands with us, and then saw the 
tears start out of his eyes, as he saw the wounded and heard their groans. Since 
then I have appreciated his love for us. 



His heart was as tender as a child's, and there were but few men 
who did not possess the power to resist appeals in a greater degree 
than Senator Morton. 

The veteran soldiery were his fast friends. In all political con- 
tests he rallied them nearly as one man. They loved him and 
loved to do him honor ; and I predict that the recent call made on 
the veteran soldiery of Indiana for volunteer contributions to erect 
to his memory a statue will be responded to in the most speedy 
manner ; that they Avill erect to him a monument fitting and fitted 
to perpetuate his name through all time to come; and when this 
monument is completed, as it soon will be, if I were allowed to 
suggest an appropriate inscription, I would have cut upon it the 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 121 

simple but eloquent words "Oliver P. Morton, The Soldier's 
Friend." 

Another prominent characteristic which Governor Morton pos- 
sessed in an eminent degree was his trenchant manner of expression. 
It would seem that he culled from the list of words the strongest 
and most intense, and when formed into his epigrammatic sentences 
they expressed in the clearest manner exactly what he meant to 
say. He was not a diplomatist, for he never made use of language 
for the purpose of concealing his ideas. After he had expressed 
himself, the world knew exactly what he meant. Coupled with 
this great power of expression was a natural gift of reasoning. I 
have rarely met a man who possessed pre-eminently the power of 
reasoning to such a degree as did Senator Morton. When he 
turned his mind on any given subject and gave the result to the 
world there was little left to be said on either side. 

In debate it mattered not how many were opposed to him or 
who were his adversaries. Numbers or ability never cowed him ; 
and there were few that encountered him that were not " shorn of 
their strength." When he exposed fallacy, plausibility melted 
before his sledge-hammer blows. When he attacked deception, his 
shafts rent asunder the garb in which it was cloaked. When he 
dealt in invective, his foes withered before his terse sentences. 

On all public questions Senator Morton had decided convic- 
tions. He never temporized or apologized for his views. He 
rarely engaged in personal colloquy, and never indulged in person- 
alities. He was a leader in public sentiment, and molded the 
opinions of others to his own. He was original and aggressive, 
bold, fearless, and intrepid. In the workings of his face could be 
traced the deep cogitations of his mind. When he uttered a sen- 
tence it was big with meaning and burdened with a world of 



16 



122 ADDRESS OF MR. CALKINS ON THE 

thought. He constantly impressed you with the immense reserve 
power which lay partially hidden behind the massive stern brow 
and fixed determined face. 

In these days of sensationalism the magic of oratory over the 
masses in a marked degree has vanished. I remember with pride 
some of the names of Indiana's orators. The names of Hannegan, 
Marshall, Dunn, Wilson, and Willard, with their eloquence and 
magnetism, still burnish and brighten the pages of the history of 
my State. But Senator Morton possessed neither magnetism nor 
eloquence, and yet his hearers hung upon his words like a "bee 
upon the flower;" for hours they would stand riveted to his utter- 
ances, while he never seasoned his speech with an anecdote or 
embellished it with a burst of eloquence. It was his plain, simple 
manner of statement which held them fast. It was that power 
which was referred to by the apostle when he said " Come, let us 
reason together." 

As I have said, Senator Morton lacked personal magnetism. He 
had little imagery in his composition. He made use of no poetry or 
lofty flights of eloquence. "Sweet soothing words" were not his. 
Electrical sparks never passed between him and his auditors. But 
combined with his simple and pure statement of fact he had a vein 
of pathos which reached every heart. In his political discussions I 
have often noted how his face lighted up with a strange fascination, 
and his sledge-hammer gesticulation exactly fitted the flaming face. 
His voice was distinct, not overanimated, but searching. The three 
combined seemed exactly fitted for each other and blended together 
in perfect harmony. Mr. Speaker, the eloquence, magnetism, and 
enchantment of popular orators may fade and be forgotten, but the 
remarkable canvasses and career and the more remarkable speeches 
of Senator Morton will never be effaced. 



LIFE AND CHAEACTER OP OLIVER P. MORTON. 123 

In 1864 Mr. Morton was elected governor of the State of Indiana. 
He was shortly afterward, in 1867, elected to the United States Sen- 
ate, in which body he has been a continuous member up to the time 
of his death, making a public career in all of nearly twenty years. 
When he entered the Senate of the United States he found there the 
brightest talent of the land. He had no ordinary minds to grapple 
with. Many of his associates will justly take rank with the greatest 
of American statesmen ; but in the midst of this constellation Gov- 
ernor Morton at once took equal rank, and there were none, from 
the day he entered the Senate to the day of his death, who outshone 
him. As was truthfully remarked by his present successor in the 
Senate, " he was the ablest political leader this country ever produced." 
Contrast at this day would be objectionable, but I may safely say 
without giving offense to any that in the years that are to come, when 
the historian shall search the pages and records of that body, his pen 
will write Oliver P. Morton down as a man of the strongest mind, 
the greatest genius, more originality, and the largest individuality of 
any member that occupied a seat in the Senate with him. The con- 
stitutional lawyer in ages to come will read with interest his inter- 
pretations of that instrument; his utterances will be quoted when 
all of us have passed away. 

Other nations have preserved the words of wisdom uttered by their 
great statesmen. So have we. We are familiar with the grand utter- 
ances of Adams, Jefferson, Calhoun, Webster, Clay, Benton, Doug- 
las, Seward, and Sumner; but none of these will hold a greater 
place in the history of this nation than will Oliver P. Morton. 
Strewn along on every page is the impress of his giant intellect ; in- 
grafted in the organic law of our land is the offspring of his mighty 
brain, and printed upon our statute books are the emanations of his 
lofty thought. 



